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I have no problem with Google sending me targeted ads. If they do it well, I'll happily support the business model and make them money. That's a completely di
by xiaoma 14y ago
I have no problem with Google sending me targeted ads. If they do it well, I'll happily support the business model and make them money. That's a completely different proposition than giving away personally identifiable information.
>If you are going to sue then you have to wonder what it is that you want to achieve!
In the above scenario of them illegally selling my private communications to the highest bidder, I would want damages to 1) sufficiently compensate me for any violations of my privacy and 2) provide a powerful disincentive to other companies who might consider taking similar actions, thus shifting the game theory of mass consumer social businesses. In order to achieve the second of these aims, criminal charges for the offending parties would be more effective than mere financial penalties.
> Terms and conditions as a rule contain a clause that says that they can be amended at some point in the future. That alone makes most t&c completely meaningless and giving a company a large amount of data on you is a risky proposition at best.
Fortunately there are laws beyond T&C click-throughs. I support strengthening those laws in regards to any kind of of privacy bait and switches. In cases where I have a reasonable amount of trust in the company (e.g. Google), I'll use the service. But I'll still support legal protections, the EFF and those who call out underhanded companies.
Call me naive if you like, but I prefer that response to taking an RMSesque one-man stand by simply not using the tools the rest of the world is adopting.
- jacquesm 14y ago> That's a completely different proposition than giving away personally identifiable information. That's just one hack or a terms-of-service change away from happening. Again, google being hacked at that level is unlikely (but they've had an instance of an engineer going rogue and accessing customer accounts for stalking purposes), and google changing their TOS in such a customer hostile way is also unlikely but I would never bet against either of those happening in the longer term. > In the above scenario of them illegally selling my private communications to the highest bidder, I would want damages to 1) sufficiently compensate me for any violations of my privacy You're going to have to define 'sufficiently'. What price would you put on your privacy? A few hundred bucks (the typical take in a class action suit is much smaller than that, except if you're a lawyer of course). A few thousand? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? For me it is high enough that I won't consider taking the risk. And if I did take the risk I'd have implicitly granted google the ability and possibly even the right to screw me over. Using the legal system to seek redress over something that I can avoid in a much simpler way seems to be the easy solution to me. Convenience has a price, but my privacy is worth a lot more than the value of convenience. > Fortunately there are laws beyond T&C click-throughs. Sure there are. But especially in the United States those laws regarding privacy are pretty weak. And these are all US companies we're talking about here. > I support strengthening those laws in regards to any kind of of privacy bait and switches. I would too, but right now bait-and-switch is perfectly legal, as long as you warn up front that you can change your terms you're in the clear. > Call me naive if you like, but I prefer that response to taking an RMSesque one-man stand by simply not using the tools the rest of the world is adopting. For me it isn't worth it, for you it is. If you look back in a few years with regret then you have to wonder what real grounds you have for a lawsuit, after all this is apparently something you are aware of, you can't use the law to fix such things after the fact. The loss of your privacy can not be undone.