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German Court: "Sharing" Your Amazon Purchases Is Spamming (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A court in Germany has ruled that the 'Share' links which Amazon provides to customers directly after making a purchase at the site are unlawful. The "Share" functionality provides buttons which allow the consumer to signal a new purchase via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or email. The court, ratifying an earlier decision made at a lower court, declared that emails initiated via the Share function constitute "unsolicited advertising and unreasonable harassment."
Thanks for the post, I'll have to check it out.
Seems like freedom of speech to me
Jawohl, mein herr!
Fun fact: Amazon doesn't pay any taxes in Germany, they're all "profits" "realized" in Ireland.
Where it pays no taxes too.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
All spammers could claim the same "freedom of speech" defence.
Fortunately the world is not quite stupid enough to accept that as a valid excuse for what is very clearly unsolicited advertising.
As long as they're at it, why don't they ban Flat Design also? That would be really nice.
Captcha: contempt
Those "share" buttons are idiotic, and mostly idiots appear to use them, but I really don't want the idiotic government deciding for me whether I can push some idiotic button that sends an idiotic email on my behalf. It isn't like it's some automated process that happens automatically! It takes person X actively deciding to send this to his friend person Y.
If you don't want to use this, just don't use it. It's that simple. That's what I do.
If your friends are doing this to you, and you don't want them to, ask them not to, just like you'd do if they were sending you daily emails you didn't want about anything else.
The last thing we need is government bureaucrats micromanaging the internet.
Court verdicts are not easy to read, but they managed to garble it further.
The verdict is not about sharing your purchases but the unsolicited sharing of offers from marketplace vendors.
I don't think I've ever been so happy with a purchase that I felt the need to e-mail everyone in my contact list to let them know so I'm totally fine with that button getting removed. After all, that's what FB and Twitter are there for, bragging about dumb shit... Well that and reposting things that are easily disproved with 10 seconds of googling, at least if the average post from my extended family is any evidence.
So, when are they going to rule on all those pictures of meals on facebook. Like, yeah, wish you were here, but bring your AmEx black card.
A little more seriously, awhile back a relative enabled some odious Netflix feature that posted cover art and a Netflix-generated synopsis of every title he viewed. He watched a *lot* of Netflix. Man, that was annoying. I just turned off any contributions from his account in my news stream. Other family members unfriended him. But the point is, features like this that are completely machine generated are highly obnoxious. I'm not sure banning them is the answer, because I don't believe people should be protected from their own antisocial decisions, but I could see it happening.
I'm not sure why people would want this (amazon) feature anyway.
"I just bought a Sony X950B on Amazon!" (Cool. Where do you live again?)
Recent purchases:
Sony BDPS3500 Blu-ray Player
"Circle of two" unrated version
60 count Horny Goat Weed Extract
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If this counts as harassment and unsolicited advertisements, why not the junk that fills up my feed when a social media contact "likes" some commercial speech, and MyLinkedFace+ copies the original to what I see? I could get behind that kind of rationale to block the stupid viral content that I often see.
I can say and do anything I want with my social media accounts, and YOU have the right and ability to unfollow me if you believe it to be spam. The controls are there for you to use. And if my social media activity bugs you, then unfollow me.
This is where a court needs to use the First Amendment to break necks of the government.
Government deciding I may not tell friends about something? Ummmm, no.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Surely there's an opt-out option? If not, then it's spam.
But it's not you sending it from your email or webmail client, it's amazon. That makes it spam, automated unsolicited email.
Europe wonders why it has no tech innovation in the last 20 years. It's shit like this.
Not really interested in letting people know what I just bought.
I do many times send the partial URL of a product I am looking at or have purchased when a conversation comes to that via email or IM, but I am the one creating the message, not Amazon.
thiz amazon is killing our book shopz and this twitter is making our piple very nervös.
stop thiz.
I saw this in the news as well, the 68% mess their credit up by age 30. There is a LOT of evidence a lot of consumer spending is on credit. In a WHOLE ECONOMY based on consumer spending. With 2/3 of the country having bad credit issues this seems like a real problem.
68% of Americans destroy credit before age 30: Survey
Mon Jan 25 2016
6 Hours Ago CNBC.com
Have you made mistakes regarding your credit in the past? That could haunt you ... for a long time.
A whopping 68 percent of Americans make at least one major financial mistake, or "credit fumble," before turning 30, leading to a negative mark on their credit report, according to a Credit Karma survey.
These mistakes include overspending on credit cards, missing payments, defaulting on a loan or having an account sent into collections, the survey found.
The greater the offense, the longer it will reflect on your credit report, said Bethy Hardeman, chief consumer advocate at Credit Karma. In fact, it usually takes consumers seven to 10 years to erase negative marks from their credit, thanks to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
"I think what a lot of people don't realize ... is how a missed payment can stay on your credit," Hardeman said. "It can be one mistake that you don't think is a big deal that can cost you thousands in the long run."
How you can avoid painful credit costs
Credit is an important factor in determining what kind of loans consumers receive, as well as whether they are approved for an apartment lease, Hardeman added.
The survey, released Thursday, found that 3 out of 4 respondents believed their credit-related mishaps have had a negative impact on their lives.
"These early mistakes can have a lingering impact on the quality of people's lives, and we feel that with better, targeted education and learning tools for new-to-credit consumers, this cycle can be broken," Kenneth Lin, Credit Karma's founder and CEO, said in a statement.
There are many reasons why someone may end up with a negative mark on their credit history, but the biggest one is lack of education, Credit Karma found.
Just paid for your credit scores? Big mistake
More than 50 percent of respondents said they had received their first credit card by age 21, but 72 percent said they had received no education about personal finances before going to college.
Hardeman said consumers should know "the long-term ramifications before you take out a credit card or take out a loan."
Consumers also need to understand how their overall credit works, said Sean McQuay, credit cards expert at NerdWallet.
"Your credit shows how good you are at managing other people's money, not your own," he said.
Credit score ... and over time, you can apply for more traditional credit cards."
Four ways to improve your credit score
One way consumers can regain proper footing on their credit is by applying for a secured credit card, McQuay said. "This gives you a chance to prove yourself
Secured credit cards work just like any other credit card. The only difference is the cardholder has to put up a certain amount of money as collateral, and his or her credit line will usually equal the collateral's amount.
However, McQuay also said the consumer needs to be mindful of the risks involved with secure credit cards.
You need to have the cash on hand," he said. "Even $100 can be a lot of money for someone to just give over."
For the study, Credit Karma and research firm Qualtrics surveyed 1,051 American adults ages 31 to 44 from late November 2014 to early 2015.
If you dig deeper, you'll find some more details about the reason behind the ruling. The problem isn't really the sending of the mail as such, but the fact that Amazon can collect the email addresses of non-clients and (maybe) use them in future marketing campaigns (aka spam). If these recommendation links on the Amazon website would open a "New Message" window in your own mail software instead, there probably wouldn't be a problem (but this would be a real challenge to implement across all platforms).
Doesn't Germany have other more pressing issues to worry about than Amazon?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes