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Unroll.me Is Sorry It Got Caught Selling Users' Email Records to Uber


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Unroll.me isn't really sorry for selling off users' data

 

Unroll.me, a service that scans your emails to help you unsubscribe from all those annoying newsletters you're getting, was caught red-handed selling off data of its users to Uber. Following the reveal, the company apologized for upsetting people when they found out, not for what they were doing. 

 

"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. And while we try our best to be open about our business model, recent customer feedback tells me we weren't explicit enough," writes Jojo Hedaya, CEO of Unroll.me.

 

Clearly, he didn't really understand why people were upset. The site has been around since 2011 and has plenty of users. The service goes through your inbox, notices which services and alerts you've signed up for and allows you a quick way to unsubscribe from the things you don't want.

 

Over the weekend, it was revealed that a few years back Uber was caught infringing on people's privacy by tracking even the people who had deleted their app. Furthermore, the company had been buying anonymized summaries of people's emails from Unroll.me, which would allow the ride-hailing app to figure out how many of its customers had switched to Lyft based on the emails they got.

 

It's all there in the files no one reads


Hedaya notes in his blog post that the fact that they sell people's data off is in the terms and conditions and the privacy policy, so everything is legal. This would explain why he doesn't feel the need to apologize to users from a legal standpoint, but it certainly won't do the company any favors from a PR standpoint.

 

Users are, understandably, upset and ready to revoke the app access to their inboxes. Even if an actual apology were to come now, the company's public image is officially ruined.

 

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Can you believe that millions of people are so stupid as to believe that a service is free and hasn't found some way to make money off it.  Or that millions of people really don't read EULAs, terms of service, and privacy policies.  If people want to be mad at anyone they should kick themselves in the ass for being so stupid.  Some of you may remember the old prank of taping a sign to someone's back that read "KICK ME", well almost anyone carrying a phone or tablet today should automatically have that sign put on their back.  It is amazing people don't seem to care and it is some type of badge of honor to have more apps on your phone than your friends.  I don't use phones that have a lot of proprietary apps (like Samsung) and I only install four apps on my phone, and they are all security related.  It is so easy to unsubscribe from an email you subscribed too either intentionally or thru a relationship with a company why would anyone be so lazy as to have an app do it for them.  And if you think about it, unsubscribing usually just requires hitting an unsubscribe link at the end of the email.  Think I will write an app.  One that doesn't require any permissions and doesn't do anything, but I will sell it for $1.99 and watch the idiots beat feet to my door wanting to buy it.  I think I will call it ResourceLess, and market it as an app that doesn't use any resources so it doesn't slow your phone down, it just sits on the desktop, using no resources.

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Thread moved to Security and Privacy News.

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