When a Company Gets Sold, Your Data May Be Sold, Too

An anonymous reader writes: A new report points out that many of the top internet sites have language in their privacy policies saying that your private data might be transferred in the event of an acquisition, bankruptcy sale, or other transaction. They effectively say, "We won't ever sell your information, unless things go bad for us." 85 of the top 100 websites in the U.S. (ranked by Alexa), had this sort of language, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Hulu, and LinkedIn. (RadioShack did this recently.) "The potential ramifications of the fire sale provisions became clear two years ago when True.com, a dating site based in Plano, Tex., that was going through a bankruptcy proceeding, tried to sell its customer database on 43 million members to a dating site based in Canada. The profiles included consumers' names, birth dates, sexual orientation, race, religion, criminal convictions, photos, videos, contact information and more. Because the site's privacy policy had promised never to sell or share members' personal details without their permission, Texas was able to intervene to stop the sale of customer data, including intimate details on about two million Texans." But with this new language, users no longer enjoy that sort of protection. Only 17 of the top 100 sites even say they will notify customers of the data transfer. Only a handful allow users to opt out.

Comments

Business Asset

[Virtucon]

It's a business asset and as such can be transferred and despite the terms of service and policies set forth, a bankruptcy judge can pretty much throw that away if it means getting revenue for creditors and bond holders. In a lot of cases, the value of customer data can be considered significant, why do you think WhatsApp was so valuable to Facetard?

  It's also boggling that people still think that terms and conditions actually protect them in any way, shape or form. They don't, they describe your "permitted access" and protect the provider; if you had good legal council they'd probably say "don't agree."