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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.
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.
You are the product. Well, then too they sell your data. So you are shit out of luck no matter what.
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.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
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.
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.
Boz Scaggs..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Just the kind of mealy-mouthed non-apology I expect from a modern CEO.
This guy is going places.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
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.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
So the same as using any other cab then.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It sounds shady and treacherous, until you ask "WTF is unroll.me?" so I clicked through to RTFA..
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.
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!
https://myaccount.google.com/p...
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
One more jobless "CEO". And nothing of value will have been lost.
Heart: broken. Wallet: just fine, thanks.
"You keep using that word. I do no think it means what you think it means."
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?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
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.
fucking the babysitter. I couldn't believe she was mad at me! My penis was completely anonymized with a condom most of the time.
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I'm sure he was inconsolable the whole way to the bank.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
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.
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
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
what kind of mouth breathing retard needs an app?
i just whistle into my microphone and pipe /dev/audio to netcat.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
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
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.