Air America selling mailing list – so much for their privacy policy | Hacker News Reader

Air America selling mailing list – so much for their privacy policy

geekosystem.com

22 pointsumiaq4 comments

The privacy policy mentions an exception, in several place, along the lines of "except by court order/legal requirement." Would bankruptcy proceedings, where you're required to sell/auction "everything," be considered a court order or similar legal requirement?

And, there's always this:

"b. Air America reserves the right to change this policy at any time, and users should check this page regularly for such updates. This statement and the policies outlined herein are not intended to and do not create any contractual or other legal right in or on behalf of any party." [emphasis mine]

So, never mind, I guess.

[edit: spelling]

In this case it would fall under the "court order/legal requirement". The article in the opening paragraph of the story actually leads to a Fox News story from 2006 about Air America declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Under Chapter 11 they wouldn't be legally able to sell their mailing list.

But in January they declared Chapter 7 and that's just plain liquidation. That's "game over". In fact, even without the caveat in their privacy agreement it's possible they'd have been able to sell the list in Chapter 7 (I know Chapter 7 voids corporate legal agreements because a company I worked for went Chapter 7 and that voided my non-compete clause)

Any privacy policy that includes "we can change it anytime" is essentially no privacy policy. They could just change it to "we reserve the right to sell your data" and people who signed up under the old policy have no recourse.

All privacy policies are basically moot. They mean nothing. They're as valid as those "checked secure by verisign" icons that are just there to make people who know no better have some sort of "trust" in the company that has it there.

Which is why everyone should have at least 2 ids; one that you hold private and give only to friends and family. With today's email clients which have rules based processing, it becomes easier to divert the commercial mail you no longer want this way. I actually use 3 ids, one that I give only to commercial accounts like Amazon, mailing lists and the like.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com