Unroll.me 'Heartbroken' After Being Caught Selling User Data To Uber (cnet.com)

The chief executive of email unsubscription service Unroll.me has said he is "heartbroken" that users felt betrayed by the fact that his company monetises the contents of their inbox by selling their data to companies such as Uber. Over the weekend, The New York Times published a profile of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, in which, among other things, it reported that following an acquisition by shopping app Slice in 2014, Unroll.me developed a side-business: selling aggregated data about users to the very apps they were unsubscribing from. Uber was one of Slice's big data arm Slice Intelligence's customers. CNET adds: While Unroll.me did not specifically admit to selling data to Uber, it has apologised for not being "explicit enough" in explaining how its free service worked. "It was heartbreaking to see that some of our users were upset to learn about how we monetize our free service," CEO Jojo Hedaya said on the Unroll.me blog. While reiterating that "all data is completely anonymous and related to purchases only," Hedaya admitted, "we need to do better for our users" by offering clearer information on its website.

Comments

You know what they say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apps that app other apps get apped!

Apps!

Synonyms being used

[TimothyHollins]

Let me extrapolate a little to make the CEO-talk clearer.

heartbroken = "I'm heartbroken I got caught"
monetises = scams / profiteers
side-business = shady shit we don't want our front-business associated with.
aggregated data = Doesn't include your name explicitly.
unsubscribing = Acquiring a profiteering middle-man to skim some of that money off the top.
explicit enough = details hidden in the fine print, page 233 of the TOS.
free service = not free, we are doing exactly what you used our service to prevent.
It was heartbreaking to see that some of our users were upset to learn about how we monetize our free service = You weren't supposed to find out.
we need to do better for our users = we're gonna keep doing what we're doing.

Hope this helps.

Re:Synonyms being used

[bluefoxlucid]

Oh quit being so dramatic. They sold statistics. This is the same thing as when the BLS publishes the CES showing that American households in the median income quintile direct 12.1% of their spending to food oh my god you're in that quintile and your data is being published!!!

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused. Are you Unroll.me's marketing director or just a happy employee?

Re:Synonyms being used

[johanw]

heartbroken = "I'm affraid our customers run away and now I can't selly stock for a lot of $$$ to some investor".

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy? I'm sure he was being whipped as he typed that.

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh quit being so dramatic. They sold statistics. This is the same thing as when the BLS publishes the CES showing that American households in the median income quintile direct 12.1% of their spending to food oh my god you're in that quintile and your data is being published!!!

This is what bugs me the most about these stories. They don't differentiate between personal information and population statistics. No personal information is being sold here. They sell information like 'out of 1 million subscribers, 10,000 received emails from Lyft.'. Nobody knows anything about any subscriber's usage of Lyft. It is market information. Yes, they should be clear about what they sell, and the media should be clear about it as well.

Re: Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

If there was ever a reason for pinned posts on slashdot (or "superupmod" status of some flavor), this one is a prime example. Rebuttal of a misleading but widespread interpretation of the story in one easy step. Well done.

Re:Synonyms being used

[Streetlight]

heartbroken = "I'm affraid our customers run away and now I can't selly stock for a lot of $$$ to some investor".

...$$$ to some stupid investors who'll lose what was spent buying my stupid idea. I can then spend 10% of that $$$ on my next investment scam.

Fixed that for you.

Re: Synonyms being used

[Joce640k]

It's not difficult: The owner of an "unsubscribe" service shouldn't be selling anything except unsubscriptions.

100% of his customers are against people selling their info, by definition.

He deserves all he gets.

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

They sold user data, not statistics. There's a really big difference.

Re:Synonyms being used

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Any particular reason why we should just assume that only those nice, 'anonymized', 'statistics' were for sale; or that the 'anonymizing' done wasn't as pitifully weak as it often is?

Shockingly enough, people seem to be willing to pay more for data that are more or less cosmetically obfuscated, and trivial to correlate with information from other sources; and less for data that are actually anonymous enough to be impossible to reconstruct.

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

monetises = scams / profiteers

"It's not enough that my services are free, I demand that the service providers make no money whatsoever!"

Re: Synonyms being used

[YouGotTobeKidding]

If people are that concerned, but are too cheap to PAY for a service they don't deserve any sympathy.

What do they expect? That all the overhead is being covered by some generous benefactor? Puhlease.

People should know by now that if you get a service for free you are NOT THE CUSTOMER, you are the product. Would anyone here be surprised if /. is selling meta-data on us and our habits? No? Why? Because the benefit outweighs the 'cost'.

IMHO peeps should STFU with their faux outrage and focus in on cases where people actually do pay for a service and still get treated like a product to be sold to others. This bullshit just diminishes the impact on companies that deserve to be tarred and feathered.

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

Go fuck yourself, you marketing scumbag.

Re: Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care what you assume nor would I tell you. But all available information tells us we are dealing with data aggregation. And that type of data is actually the most useful. Most companies care little about you as an individual, they care about markets and trends.

Re: Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you be against a grocery store selling information on how many of their customers bought tomatoes if you were one of them?

Re: Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

"available"

That's a nice way of saying "not all the information is public yet..." but seriously, they DO care about you as a person/individual because once they GET that aggregate data, they need to have someone to SEND the SPAM to. Get with the program....

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

They are making money off the VERY THING THE SERVICE IS TRYING TO PROVIDE.. a way OUT OF MARKETING GARBAGE.

Jesus, are you that stupid?

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, are you that stupid?

Jesus is widely reported to have had an IQ of 130-140. Street smarts too.

Re: Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

You stuff it. This business is pure deceit.

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell is this drivel like this modded "Insightful"? I guess that's less indicative of the quality of the post than it is of the mentality of the mods.

monetises = scams / profiteers

Gimme a break...

Re: Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

If people are that concerned, but are too cheap to PAY for a service they don't deserve any sympathy.

And if they paid for it and were scammed, they're saps for paying for a service that conned them, right? Because no matter what, Unroll.me isn't going to get punished for this. "Your" sympathy is worthless, and not just because you're not paying for it.

PS - Seriously, fuck you. There's no amount of money that would stop unscrupulous con arts to fuck you over for another penny if they can get away with it. There's no cost to having sympathy for anyone who gets scammed, no matter how little effort they spent to prevent it. Justifying away corrupt, evil shit of business is why such businesses thrive and aren't prosecuted. Well, that and we accept such corruption in government as well no matter how much people decry it. If only Unroll.me could be shown to have raped a child, maybe something meaningful would be done.

Re:Synonyms being used

[davester666]

From at least some reports I've read, they didn't [just?] sell statistics, also things like lyft email receipts that were 'anonymized'.

from https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanick-pushes-uber-and-himself-to-the-precipice.html:

Using an email digest service it owns named Unroll.me, Slice collected its customers’ emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber.

Re: Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

He even says so - from his blogpost:

"Our users are the heart of our company and service. So it was heartbreaking to see that some of our users were upset to learn about how we monetize our free service."

I.e. heartbreaking = breaking our users :)

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me extrapolate a little to make the CEO-talk clearer.

Absolutely perfect. You summed up the lying cheating culture that is modern American business in a fashion that's going to be hard for anyone to top.

Re: Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

They can learn from LinkedIn: having been caught doing nasty things with your personal data, they had their lawyer send everyone an email with updated ToS

Re:Synonyms being used

[Applehu Akbar]

"Oh quit being so dramatic. They sold statistics. "

You're forgetting the Slashdotista rules: to you mass information about when people visit the Walmart on Wednesdays is just anonymous data. But if the data is being sold to Uber, it's EEEVIL because UNITED MYLAN MONSANTO COMCAST AARGH!

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh quit being so dramatic. They sold statistics.

So, their customers wasn't paying enough to get all the data?

Captcha: trapped

Re:Synonyms being used

[bluefoxlucid]

That sentence doesn't say it sold receipts; it says it sold "anonymized data". They could be collecting Lyft receipts, reading the locales, aggregating statistics (which produces data that doesn't have any idenitfying information), and selling Uber statistics on age demographics, lengths of trips, where trips started and ended, times of day, etc.

If you get a block of data that tells you that 20-25-year-old males in Boston are traveling from one block area to another block area, average trip lengths of 4 miles, peaking around 7:30am and 3:30pm, with histograms per 15 minutes, what does that tell you about the users whose data went into it? Does it let you identify them as individuals? Can you somehow factor out someone's name from that?

Re: Synonyms being used

[lems1]

loved it!

Re:Synonyms being used

[Anonymous Coward]

if you can not distinguish between "aggregated" and "anonymized" maybe you should not be posting.

What is up?

[EzInKy]

All this hatred against Uber is getting mighty suspicious! What is up with that? A taxi is a just a taxi after all.

Re:What is up?

[jandersen]

All this hatred against Uber is getting mighty suspicious! What is up with that? A taxi is a just a taxi after all.

Taking an unlicensed taxi simply means getting into a car with a total stranger. Most of the drivers are probably OK, and most of them probably drive reasonably OK cars; but you don't know that. You could be unfortunate and get the serial rapist, the drunk or the guy who drives something that is falling apart, although it looks OK on the outside.

Re:What is up?

[thaylin]

Taking a licensed taxi simply means getting into a car with a total stranger. Most of the drivers are probably OK, and most of them probably drive reasonably OK cars; but you don't know that. You could be unfortunate and get the serial rapist, the drunk or the guy who drives something that is falling apart, although it looks OK on the outside.

There really isnt that much difference in Uber vs normal drivers.

Re: What is up?

[Zero__Kelvin]

So the same as using any other cab then.

Re: What is up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lyft and the traditional taxi cartels are in full shill damage mode, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into negative campaigns against Uber.

It's sad that slashdot is on the take, or at least complicit.

Re:What is up?

[Anonymous Coward]

And a taxi service who knowingly puts a serial rapist, drunk, or poor vehicle in that position can be sued for damages, and those companies have, at least potentially, deep pockets. Uber maintains its drivers aren't employees, so if they do any of the above, you can only sue them, not Uber.

Re: What is up?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had that figured out when they started pushing the "sexual harassment" button.

It always amazes me every time it happens how effective that is. It's the one accusation you need zero evidence to make that is guaranteed to be the equivalent of a conviction.

Re: What is up?

[EzInKy]

Lyft and the traditional taxi cartels are in full shill damage mode, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into negative campaigns against Uber.

I've always equated Uber and Lyft. As far as I know they both are trying to avoid having driving records and criminal background checks by governments

If you don't pay.

[hsmith]

You are the product. Well, then too they sell your data. So you are shit out of luck no matter what.

Re:If you don't pay.

[Nutria]

Exactly. Because hardware (whether direct purchase or rented AWS time) doesn't grow on trees that people can just go out and pick during the fall harvest, and neither do programmers (who like high salaries).

Re:If you don't pay.

[Anonymous Coward]

The word everyone dances around is 'cattle'. You are being farmed. They use human infant foreskin in face cream now, we're even farmed in the literal sense. This is what happens when you vote for ideologies that talk only of production and distribution of physical goods, human's become the goods.

Re:If you don't pay.

[Luthair]

Its possible they could derive some aggregate data, e.g. 50% of people subscribed to list X are subscribed to Y list. Or alternatively convince marketers to pay them for helping clean up their leads.

Re:If you don't pay.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. Why do people think unroll.me provides that service? Out of the goodness of their hearts?

Re:If you don't pay.

[Anonymous Coward]

why provide a service that relies on abusing the users to make money. its like providing pussy grabbing services, even though its free you know you are going to grab pussies... just don't do it.

Re:If you don't pay.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand what service is being not paid for. I thought that unsubscribing was a one-time thing?

Re:If you don't pay.

[Baron_Yam]

>Or alternatively convince marketers to pay them for helping clean up their leads.

Marketers LOVE people who want to unsubscribe - because while a lot of us just want to be left the hell alone, many of them are people who are fairly weak-willed and suggestible, and unsubscribing is an attempt to remove temptation.

They are, in fact, a spammer's target demographic.

The only time I hit 'unsubscribe' is when it's a specific, moderately trustworthy company where I know how the emails started coming. I mean, they MAY (probably will) still have already shared the data through parent and subsidiary companies under their 'privacy' policy, but there's some hope they won't bug you again.

But if I don't know how they got my email address? Best just to tag it spam because unsubscribing is likely a trap to identify you as an active address so they can just spam you more.

Re:If you don't pay.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately paying doesn't stop you from being a product. Selling you can still be part of the side-business.

Re: If you don't pay.

[Brockmire]

I'm going to have to request a citation for baby foreskin cream. Curious how dead skin makes bad skin good.

Re: If you don't pay.

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably has something to do with lizard people.

Re:If you don't pay.

[Anonymous Coward]

And FOSS people wonder why everyone doesn't use FOSS. What's the product there?

Re:If you don't pay.

[Lord Flipper]

...and unsubscribing is an attempt to remove temptation.

This is exactly correct. 40+ years ago I was selling encyclopedias, door-to-door, in western Canada (the BC interior, Alberta "ditto", and the Northwest Territories). I quickly learned the futility of knocking on 100+ doors in an evening, and would cruise the neighborhood, or town, looking for a number of "tells," one of which (my fave) was that little "No peddlers, solicitors, or agents" sticker/sign. Several people I was training one evening were surprised, and asked why I did that, and I told them, "People put those signs up because they're afraid that if a salesman comes to their door they might buy something."

It came in handy, especially given winter climes and the difference between knocking on 100+ doors, and knocking on 3 or 4.

Well...duh

[evolutionary]

Come on. We've seen enough of this, see the Trump deregulation of broadband providers to see people's data. We have to assume that anyone having our data is selling it unless there is a written statement indicating no data will be given to 3rd parities without the customer explicit consent. There are VPN companies who will put in writing "no traffic logs kept". Hopefully such companies honor those words. Free services have to be used with extreme caution. The irony is you can get you own email for as little as 5-10/month and you get your OWN domain. http://www.namecheap.com/ http://order.1and1.com/ http://www.name.com/ I've left out GoDaddy because they seem to have regular (if brief) service interruptions (probably from overload plus cyber attacks as GoDaddy is very, very large). There are other of course. Of course I suggest reading the privacy policy in full. Perhaps we'll start taking privacy more serious, given we have so much effort in business and government to eliminate it for profit.

Re:Well...duh

[wbr1]

VPN's suck for several reasons.

Don't get me wrong, I use them for very specific purposes, but...

Many sites do not work correctly, even on paid vpns. From languages changing to broken javascript, to slowness it makes for an aggravating user experience for an average user.

If you use your regular browser and log into sites, or even once launch your regular browser and surf, all the ad-trackers from google, facebook et all will just learn that you are on such and such VPN IP instead of such and such ISP IP. It really only blocks your ISP to see what you are doing unless you practice op-sec. And guess what, op-sec is hard as fuck to do well, even for IT experts, much less an average user.

So, you are right, always assume your data is being sold. However, mitigating that is still not easy, and it never will be as long as there is potential monetary gain from collecting it.

Re:Well...duh

[Anonymous Coward]

There was not Trump deregulation because there was never a rule in place, they are removing some proposed rules that were put up at the last moment and without much discussion and never implemented.
Get over your hatred, if you were not worried about your data being sold six months ago then you have no need to worry now, since nothing has changed.

Re: Well...duh

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ignoring the fact that it is still much harder to fingerprint a vpn user, even when using the same browsers for regular surfing. If anything, geolocation based content showing you the wrong language telling that their fingerprinting isn't as advanced as we are led to believe.

Re: Well...duh

[wbr1]

Randome Joe Website trying to be useful and show you the native language for your IP is one thing. The snippit of obfuscated ad-tracker code that picks up your Facebook or google or crappy-ad-services-llc cookies has a much better chance of finger printing you.

TL;DR - ad trcking code is almost always de-coupled from the actual web page code, and give the plethora of options for IDing you (cookies, browser fingerprinting, etc

Really?

[110010001000]

There is a company called "unroll.me" and there actually is a CEO of this "service"?

Re: Really?

[Brockmire]

Yes, there are such things as stupid questions. If the answer is, "yes, that's just what it fucking said", you've asked a stupid question.

Nothing is totally free

[hoffmanjon]

People need to understand that all of these "Free" services on the web aren't really free. Either they make money by displaying advertisements or they make money by selling data or they do both. What ever way they go, they need to monetize the service to pay the employees to continue providing the service.

Re:Nothing is totally free

[Escogido]

And it's not like paid services don't necessarily sell your data, either - after all, revenue is revenue.

Re:Nothing is totally free

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's not like paid services don't necessarily sell your data, either - after all, revenue is revenue.

In this case, they didn't sell 'your data', they sold their data, which is a statistical reflection of all of the users. If this were YOUR data, you could sell it yourself.

Re: Nothing is totally free

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been explaining this to users/clients/friends/coworkers/employers for most of my IT career to no avail. For example, 'free' email services have existed for more than 2 decades, let alone 'free' search engines. It's not that people don't give a shit, it's that they do not understand the value of their metadata, while companies making BILLIONS from it obviously do.

Re: Nothing is totally free

[stealth_finger]

I've been explaining this to users/clients/friends/coworkers/employers for most of my IT career to no avail. For example, 'free' email services have existed for more than 2 decades, let alone 'free' search engines. It's not that people don't give a shit, it's that they do not understand the value of their metadata, while companies making BILLIONS from it obviously do.

All so they can target me with ads that I'm not going to click on.

Re:Nothing is totally free

[Luthair]

For example - US Internet Service Providers. Both gouge you on pricing and sell you out.

Re: Nothing is totally free

[Anonymous Coward]

or even see, this is the funniest part of it all. the whole system is marketing fucks sucking on other marketing fucks presentations.

Re:Nothing is totally free

[JohnFen]

This is generally true, but there do, in fact, exist services that are entirely free and are even devoid of advertising. You shouldn't assume that "nothing is free", but you should pay attention to terms of service just in case.

Re:Nothing is totally free

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be hard pressed to find something that is "free", useful, and not paid for by ads, data, tax revenue, or someone with a political agenda.

Re:Nothing is totally free

[JohnFen]

True, they have grown increasingly rare over time, but they do still exist. I, as well as a number of people that I know, have run them in the past and are running them now.

The time has long passed, however, that you can assume good intentions from any service. Research is the watchword of the day.

Re:Nothing is totally free

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I really hate it when linux package managers make me pay 1.50 USD every time I download a package. I guess it's the shipping fee.

How are we supposed educate users when we keep telling them obvious lies?

Look out behind you JoJo

[turkeydance]

Boz Scaggs..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Awesome!

[EndlessNameless]

Just the kind of mealy-mouthed non-apology I expect from a modern CEO.

This guy is going places.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't give the Repugs anymore brilliant ideas.

So very "heartbroken".

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I'll bet he felt "heartbroken", too, the first time he caught himself masturbating on Christmas day.

Fuck these users (LOOK UP what unroll.me is!)

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds shady and treacherous, until you ask "WTF is unroll.me?" so I clicked through to RTFA..

Unroll.me promises to organise your inbox by sorting subscription emails and letting you unsubscribe from the ones you don't want.

OMFG. These users are giving someone else access to their email accounts?

This isn't shady. 100.0% of the users know for sure, without any question or speculation, that their emails are not being kept private. They opted into lack of privacy. That the contents of their emails are sold to others for profit, isn't a surprise to any of these people.

If you find a person who says they are surprised, then there are only two possibilities:

1) That person is lying. Don't listen to that person anymore, because they're a liar. And I don't care what happens to them. Hopefully their lying ends up costing them some kind of devastatingly painful lesson.

2) That person is over-the-top unbelievably stupid. (So unbelievably, that I really think the above "lying" explanation is far more likely.) But if they insist they're this this-magnitude of stupid, let it go. But then stop listening to them, because stupid people have just as little useful-to-say as liars.

Seriously: Fuck These Users. They knowingly signed up to get fucked; it's ok that it happened. They didn't want privacy. These users are basically the same kind of people as use gmail. Not a single one of them expects their emails to be private.

Re:Fuck these users (LOOK UP what unroll.me is!)

[Calydor]

There is a difference between expecting something to not be private and expecting someone to take advantage of it. I'd change your 'unbelievably stupid' to 'unbelievably naive', but that's just me.

Re: Fuck these users (LOOK UP what unroll.me is!)

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to give them access to your email account to use the service. An erroneous assumption on your part. They only need your email address.

Re:Fuck these users (LOOK UP what unroll.me is!)

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also a difference between believing people to share cat pictures online and being able to view them at no cost, and companies offering you "free" services and not expecting they'll monetize it somehow/some way/any way they can. The latter is not naievete. It is stupidity, as in lack of intelligence to not know that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

There is a difference between expecting something to not be private and expecting someone to take advantage of it. I'd change your 'unbelievably stupid' to 'unbelievably naive', but that's just me.

Tar, feather, run out of town on a rail

[Rick Schumann]

Optional: Drawing and quartering. That's the fate that should await any company that lies to and sells out it's users like that. Hanging is too good for them. A firing squad is too good for them. Boiling them in oil is too good for them. The WOODCHIPPER is too good for them. Head-on-a-pike in the public square, as a warning to everyone else: STOP VIOLATING OUR PRIVACY ONLINE, YOU BASTARDS!

Re:Tar, feather, run out of town on a rail

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you shouldn't have violated your email ToS by giving them access to your email account? Anyway, many email providers are already doing similar data mining. What's surprising is that they haven't released an automatic unsubscribe me feature.

Re:Tar, feather, run out of town on a rail

[TheEden]

It will be sooner them quartering us for not submitting to their business model, though.

Re:Tar, feather, run out of town on a rail

[Rick Schumann]

What do you mean, exactly?

Handy Link

[OverlordQ]

https://myaccount.google.com/p...

Let's replace him with a robot !

[Anonymous Coward]

One more jobless "CEO". And nothing of value will have been lost.

Translation

[BenBoy]

Heart: broken. Wallet: just fine, thanks.

A serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm seriously curious - what the hell is my data worth? I went online yesterday - bought BBQ sauce. I've been buying BBQ from the same place for the past 20 years (mail order in the days before the interwebs). I've probably been buying it at the same rate for the past 20 years. What is that data worth to someone? What can they do with it? Email me coupons for another brand? So I hit delete and they're gone. I have a junk email address I use for all my online shopping, and it gets clogged with 1000 offers I'm not interested in, and when it becomes too much I get another one. Speaking as a guy who has never bought a product from an advertisement, how does all this meaningless advertising pay for the internet?

Re:A serious question

[nukenerd]

I'm seriously curious - what the hell is my data worth? I went online yesterday - bought BBQ sauce. I've been buying BBQ from the same place for the past 20 years (mail order in the days before the interwebs). I've probably been buying it at the same rate for the past 20 years. What is that data worth to someone?

Thanks for that info on your buying habits. I've just sold it to Unroll.me, got quite a bit for it too.

Re:A serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, it's a buying habit. It's a completely predictable buying habit. It's a buying habit that has little if any likelihood of changing in the future. You might as well also sell them the fact that I consume some amount of sunshine on nice days. Who can monetize that? How much could you possibly get for that piece of data? A penny? Even that much? It is a matter of 100M users all giving you their data, and you're selling it for a fraction of a penny each?

Re:A serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

how does all this meaningless advertising pay for the internet?

It's all still at the fraud stage. Suckers like Uber are buying data they don't know is worthless.
I think the spammers have just about run out of sucker clients to advertise for, so browsing and shopping data is the new scam.

Once again, Gen X cynicism to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, is anybody surprised that Gen X are known for their cynicism.

To quote The Princess Bride...

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

"You keep using that word. I do no think it means what you think it means."

He feels ...

[fahrbot-bot]

The chief executive of email unsubscription service Unroll.me has said he is "heartbroken" that users felt betrayed by the fact that his company monetises the contents of their inbox by selling their data to companies such as Uber.

Heartbroken because user "felt betrayed" or actually were betrayed?

Re:He feels ...

[Megane]

"It was heartbreaking to see that some of our users were upset to learn about how we monetize our free service,"

Heartbroken because the users found out about it.

Nothing new

[LeftCoastThinker]

Nothing is free, if you are not paying, you are the product. This has been going on for a long time now (Facebook, Google etc.) Anyone who is surprised at this point has not been paying attention.

Re:I thought we were in love

[Anonymous Coward]

it takes courage to be this heart broken

Tim Cook...

[Anonymous Coward]

Salutes his 'courage'.

You

[Anonymous Coward]

You were supposed to be the chosen one.....

I was heartbroken when my wife caught me

[slashdice]

fucking the babysitter. I couldn't believe she was mad at me! My penis was completely anonymized with a condom most of the time.

Re:I thought we were in love

[davester666]

I'm sure he was inconsolable the whole way to the bank.

Re: I thought we were in love

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of mouth breathing retard needs an app to unsubscribe from other apps?

Re:I thought we were in love

[TheRealHocusLocus]

History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies the same defeats
Keep your finger on important issues
With crocodile tears and a pocketful of tissues
I'm just the oily slick
On the windup world of the nervous tick
In a very fashionable hovel
~Elvis Costello, Beyond Belief

Silicon Valley, more entertaining than any novel

Re: I thought we were in love

[Anonymous Coward]

A mouth breathing retard one...

Re: I thought we were in love

[retchdog]

what kind of mouth breathing retard needs an app?

i just whistle into my microphone and pipe /dev/audio to netcat.

TANSTAAFL

[Anonymous Coward]

People really need to be more skeptical.