Sears and Kmart start new privacy worry
Sears has been caught by a security researcher installing Comscore tracking software on users PC’s without adequate warning or information. According to Computer Associates security researcher Benjamin Googins, sears has been quietly installing comscore tracking software, which will track everything from which banks, what logins, and what porn sites you visit, as well as any other sears related shopping.
Visiting Sears.com (and Kmart.com) a few weeks ago, I was offered a chance to join My SHC Community, for free, but what I received was, from a privacy perspective, very costly. Sears.com is distributing spyware that tracks all your Internet usage - including banking logins, email, and all other forms of Internet usage - all in the name of “community participation.” Every website visitor that joins the Sears community installs software that acts as a proxy to every web transaction made on the compromised computer. In other words, if you have installed Sears software (”the proxy”) on your system, all data transmitted to and from your system will be intercepted. Source: Computer Associates
What is interesting about this and quite rightly read write web and techdirt bring up a good number of issues, is at what point is the demarcation between sheeple and people begin. Obviously, neither Sears nor Kmart are acting in the best privacy interests of their consumers, and at what point does the company pay a penalty for abusing their users trust?
What is interesting is that Ben Edelman has verified the findings from CA.
At this point, Sears, Kmart and Comscore have yet another public relations disaster on their hand, but one that they created on their own. Sears and Kmart have abused the trust of their consumers, and their shoppers by not providing clear clean precise information about the software that was being installed on their PC’s.
This goes beyond a reasonable business issue; this is one of trust being taken advantage of. In a community of shoppers and people who probably do not know, they have some computer they got for 500 dollars, shop at the lower end of the economic food chain. Like many transactions at that level, they take advantage of people who have few if any resources to defend themselves.
This whole conversation about tracking software probably will not even hit their core shopping economic strata. They will remain ignorant, thinking that they are getting something, when what they are getting is a pervasive spying system on their computers, and one that they will most likely remain ignorant of as odds are pretty good they will not read what bloggers are saying.
[…] ability to figure out what you are likely to do, talk to, and think has become far too easy. Some companies, some governments can’t seem to get around the inescapable conclusion, to monitor is to control, […]