Tagprivacy

Motion to dismiss in Penkava v. Yahoo case

Earlier this month Yahoo filed a motion to dismiss in the Penkava v. Yahoo. This is the class action lawsuit where an Alabama resident is attempting to sue Yahoo for violation of the California wiretapping law. Here’s the short synopsis. People send mail to Yahoo. Yahoo “creeps and peeps” on that mail so they can profit from it. Plaintiff doesn’t like this, and thinks that...

New EU directives

The EU has published consumer protection directives. Members states have 2 years to implement and enforce these directives. The interesting bit is this: 3) Banning pre-ticked boxes on websites When shopping online – for instance buying a plane ticket – you may be offered additional options during the purchase process, such as travel insurance or car rental. These additional services may be...

Spam lawsuit guide

Mailchimp has released a guide to spam lawsuits with advice on how to not be a target.
I had the pleasure of meeting some of the Mailchimp legal staff last year when I was down there to do on-site training for their abuse desk employees. I was quite impressed with them and their understanding of privacy and email issues.

Light blogging for a while

Sorry for the lack of substantive posts, things seem to have gone completely out of control and I’m not finding a lot of extra cycles to sit down and blog. I’ll try and get some stuff up this week, but I’m also getting ready for MAAWG and the sessions I’m a part of there. There was an interesting post by Romer over on his personal blog. If you don’t know, Romer helps...

Email and law in the news

A couple things related to the intersection of email and law happened recently. The 6th circuit court ruled that the government must have a search warrant before accessing email. The published opinion is interesting reading, not just because of the courts ruling on the law but also because of the defendant. Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals toyed with spamming to advertise their product as a brief...

Broken Policies

As an email policy wonk, I think a lot about how specific policy implementations can go wrong. Sure, every policy can go wrong, or not fit a common case. A lot of people only write polices that address common cases and don’t worry about the rarer cases. The problem is there are some rare cases that may cause significant harm and those cases should be addressed. Consumerist has a case up...

Who's sharing data

Al has a post asking what people would do if their information was shared after opting out of any sharing. It’s a tough call and one I think about as I see mail coming to my mailbox to such addresses as laura-sony and laura-quicken and laura-datran. All of these were addresses given to specific companies and where I attempted to opt-out of them sharing my data with other companies...

About that spam suit

John Levine has a longer blog post about the Smith vs. Comcast suit. Be sure to read the comment from Terry Zink about the MS related claims.

Google Buzz

Google Buzz has garnered a lot of attention this week, most of it looking at the privacy implications of requiring users to opt-out of sharing information with anyone who’s ever sent them email. WARNING: Google Buzz Has a Huge Privacy Flaw Fugitivus Blog (possibly NSFW due to language) A dangerous buzz and opt-in isn’t just for email How Google Buzz just blew your psuedonym Lifehacker...

Privacy policies in the real world

This weekend we took the car in for service. Instead of dropping it off at the dealership, we found a small, local garage. Prominently positioned on the counter was their Email Privacy Policy. The full text of the notice. WEBSITE INFORMATION: When you visit the QualityTuneup.com website you are providing information about your visit to Kihon Media. We know which pages you visited, what is...

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