The Federal Trade Commission is doing all it can to stop RadioShack from selling your data to the highest bidder.
Last month, it was discovered that RadioShack had chosen to place its collection of emails and user data up for auction among all of its other assets. "RadioShack's information about tens of millions of consumers - including names, addresses, email addresses and what they spent money on in the stores - is potentially valuable. But it also has raised considerable concern among consumer protection officials, who have tried to get the bankruptcy court to drop that from the list of assets that can be sold," reports CBS News.
A number of parties have tried to stop RadioShack from selling this data, including attorneys generalfrom Texas, Oregon and Tennessee. Now the FTC has stepped in. The independent government agency's Consumer Protection Director Jessica Rich recently submitted a letter to RadioShack in an attempt to stop them as well.
According to the FTC, the letter "points to the extensive privacy promises that RadioShack made to consumers both online and in its stores - including promises not to sell consumers' information or the company's mailing lists. [Rich] notes the FTC's previous intervention in the bankruptcy of online retailer Toysmart, which sought to sell its customers' personal information, counter to the promises the company made in its privacy policies."
The FTC director recommends that RadioShack place conditions on the data that would restrict its usage and stop others from misusing the data. These conditions would make sure that RadioShack sells the data "to another entity that is in substantially the same line of business as RadioShack, that the buyer agree to be bound by the RadioShack privacy policies that were in place when the consumers' data was collected, and that the buyer provide consumers with notice and obtain their affirmative consent before using data in a way that is materially different from the promises RadioShack made to consumers."
RadioShack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Feb. 5.
