Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

QANTAS Wants To Monitor Frequent Flyers' Home Internet

Posted by timothy on from the watching-you-from-below-and-above dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Australian Airline QANTAS wants to monitor recording frequent flyers' home internet searching and surfing. QANTAS will pass the data to US marketing partner FreeCause who are not subject to Australian privacy laws. Meanwhile the Australian Attorney-General's Department has been secretly drafting new data retention laws to log Australians' web surfing. The government claims it needs these to fight crime, yet is ignoring corruption by its own public service."

4 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Worst Summary Ever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thanks Timothy for posting the most horribly written, inaccurate and misleading summary ever. You should be ashamed for this clickbait trolling. Anybody who reads the fucking article will see your summary has little connection to the truth.

    No wonder slashdot is such a toilet bowl now.

  2. Things To Do With VMs While I'm Bored by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    1) I'm normally pretty shy, but, umm, if I had a VM, it would be okay with me to install the Airline Privacy-Invading Spyware Toolbar in a VM
    2) I would then do nothing on the VM other than search for My Little Pony two or three times a day, probably in the early evening hours.
    3) So that it looks like a trend and not just a rarity in the long tail, encourage other members of the Herd to do likewise
    4) Smile, smile, smile when some overworked jackapple in the airline's marketing department, confused by this spike in the data, paints a rainbow on a Dash-8 because the data mining algorithm says that'll make it 20% cooler.

  3. I wouldn't count on the NRA by L.+J.+Beauregard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When tyranny comes to America, the NRA members will not be fighting the government. They will be at the rallies, waving flags and chanting slogans between the Sousa marches.

    --
    Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
    Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
  4. This is NOT NEW. by upuv · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Qantas has had a form of spyware for years. Over 7 years ago I saw it's first version. It was a horrible crash prone mess. It was a flight search bar with other value add addons. And yes it reported to the mother ship.

    A lot of airlines did the same. So did package delivery companies.

    I work rather closely with large companies that are deploying or have deployed improved analytics tools to track your every click. Big brother exists. An issue is it's not just one big brother.

    Face book for example. Almost every single app is mining your account for information. Very use any of the facebook apps if you must use facebook. Only ever give the minimal amount of information. Remember you are the product.

    If you are dumb enough to ever install a "toolbar" then you get what you asked for. There is no such thing as a free value addon. They will all cost you dearly.