Bankrupt RadioShack aims to sell 67m customer names and addresses

[jimmy olsen]

I'll let the smile do my talking on this one.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/18/bankrupt-radioshack-selling-customer-data-names-addresses

Bankrupt RadioShack aims to sell 67m customer names and addresses

If you bought insurance on your TV in 1998, the company remembers – and as it faces creditors, attorneys are looking into how much data it can legally sell

Available from RadioShack: three-prong adaptors, television antennas, cellphone cases, and millions of its former customers' street addresses and emails.

Over its 90-year history, the company acquired personally identifiable information about its customers including social security numbers, emails, home addresses, telephone numbers, "and other government issued identification numbers unique to each consumer", according to RadioShack's legal filings.

The highly sensitive information (SSNs and the like) is retained at stores for two years and then purged. Less sensitive purchase records were expunged after three years in some cases, but RadioShack kept them "indefinitely" if customers bought a warranty, so if you bought insurance on your television in 1998, RadioShack remembers.

Now the company is trying to determine how much it will be able to legally sell in an effort to keep creditors at bay. It has decided emails and addresses are probably what it wants to sell, specifically "67 million customer name and physical mailing address files together with any associated transaction data collected by the Debtors within the five (5) year period prior" to its bankruptcy, according to a recommendation by the company's attorney, Elise Frejka.

The deal between RadioShack and Standard General, the company that placed the high bid for the bankrupt tech retailer's assets, is set for a final hearing in a Delaware bankruptcy court later this week. If the deal is approved, it will maintain business as usual at many RadioShack stores and keep the data with them. If not, RadioShack will have a much harder time selling the data should it need to liquidate its assets.

"The firm has been working with the state attorneys general to ensure that the customer data is protected, and has committed to maintain RadioShack's strict privacy policies," said a spokesman for Standard General.

Jessica L Rich, FTC bureau of consumer protection director, said if the company wants to do that, it has to notify everyone involved. "[W]e believe it would be appropriate for RadioShack to obtain affirmative consent from its customers before it transfers the data. The consent process would allow customers to make their own determination as to whether a transfer of their information would be acceptable to them. For consumers who do not consent, their data would be purged."

"The information you give us is treated with discretion and respect," reads the RadioShack privacy policy in place at the time of the company's bankruptcy. "We pride ourselves on not selling our private mailing list. From time to time, we may send you information from our company or from select, responsible companies that may join with RadioShack to bring you special offers."

Soon, it will be the highest bidder looking to bring special offers to RadioShack's former customers, and Rich is firing off a warning shot. "We are concerned," she wrote, "that a sale or transfer of the personal information of RadioShack's customers would contravene RadioShack's express promise not to sell or rent such information and could constitute a deceptive or unfair practice under Section 5 of the FTC Act."

RadioShack said in court filings that it collected more than 117m customer records, though many of the entries may be duplicates. Now that technology has made it possible for advertisers to look at data sets of that size at scale, that information is incredibly valuable to marketers who can design and target ad campaigns based on such massive amounts of personal information.

Tough talk aside, when the FTC censured Toysmart, an online toy retailer seeking to sell similar information in bankruptcy, the regulator published a set of guidelines. In her brief, Frejka proposed a very similar set of guidelines for anybody who wanted to purchase the data in a response to Rich's letter.

If a buyer wants to take over the company and run it as a going concern with its websites and stores intact, Frejka wrote, there should be no problem with its maintaining RadioShack's databases of personally identifiable information on its customers. Similarly, she contended that the courts should have no problem with the transaction if a high bidder agrees to abide by RadioShack's privacy policies and give data-mined customers a heads-up, no permission asked.

The question of whether the consumer gets a say will probably be the sticking point between the company and the FTC.

[Martinus]

See, this is why TTIF raises such concerns in Europe. Under the EU data protection regulation such sale would be illegal with respect to data of customers located in the EU. TTIF may change it.

[MadImmortalMan]

Ironically, one of the main reasons people stopped shopping there was they insisted on asking everyone for their name, address, phone number, etc before letting them buy anything.

[DGuller]

Ironically, one of the main reasons people stopped shopping there was they insisted on asking everyone for their name, address, phone number, etc before letting them buy anything.

I guess they were planning ahead.

[Caliga]

Ironically, one of the main reasons people stopped shopping there was they insisted on asking everyone for their name, address, phone number, etc before letting them buy anything.

A few years back there was a huge bitchfest on Howard Stern about that.  Baba Booey, who is a huge audiophile, used to love Radio Shack and would go there for anything audio-related that he could, but stopped when he got sick of the personal details harassment.  He was like "why do I need to give you all that if all I want is a $3 connector?"

[DontSayBanana]

This is awfully old news from the Guardian- ain't gonna happen.  RadioShack was already told during the AT&T separation brouhaha that they could only sell the demographic info if they could do it in a way that stuck to the privacy policy existing before going into the bankruptcy proceedings; since we clearly told people we wouldn't sell the info, we can't sell it now.

[Monoriu]

Ironically, one of the main reasons people stopped shopping there was they insisted on asking everyone for their name, address, phone number, etc before letting them buy anything.

So electronics is just a front.  Their main business is selling personal information.  Got that.