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Ask HN: Is the outrage over Unroll.me selling Lyft receipts to Uber warranted?

9 points by pccampbell ↗ HN
Unroll.me is a popular inbox tool for unsubscribing to email newsletters. They monetize by selling your data through Slice Media (and don't really talk about this on their marketing site). In Mike Isaac's profile on Travis Kalanick of Uber, it was revealed Uber engineer/growth folks bought this anonymized receipt data.

Original article: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanick-pushes-uber-and-himself-to-the-precipice.html

10 comments

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 26.0 ms ] thread
mankash666
Yes!! Nobody reads the fine print on the EULA. Companies are hiding behind this to do things customers wouldn't otherwise allow. If unroll explicitly stated their inbox scraping and data selling aspect as loudly as their unsubscribe "USP", no one would use them
pccampbell
I think I agree with you, but I'm not sure no one would use them. A lot of folks use Mint/Personal Capital and I believe they disclose a lot more about the data being the product for offers.

I'd be interested in slicing the outrage responses by age or tech sophistication. After all, my parents are still uncomfortable putting their CC in online. Just a different world now.

pccampbell
On one hand this is similar to all kinds of financial institutions who sell your data (which is why you'll get a bunch of credit card offers). It's a bit better than those, because it at least appears like the emails/receipts are anonymized.

On the other hand, this was hidden deep in the TOS and Privacy Policies, whereas some extra disclosure probably would have helped the backlash they're getting today.

I hate the phrase "if you're not paying, then you're the product", because plenty of freemium models don't follow that narrative, but in this case it seems crystal clear. I supposed we're just seeing how naive people can be with their personal data (email inboxes).

willysheps
I didn't know Unroll.me was using inbox data for this, but I can't say that I'm surprised. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
pccampbell
Sure. If you examine the freemium model, you're either the product or you're going to be sold too. Personally, if I'm getting value out of a product and it's free, I'd rather be sold to than have my data sold in some manner.
AznHisoka
If there is no outrage over SimilarWeb/Jumpshot buying Google Chrome browser extensions and tracking every url (even https ones like banking sites) you visit.. and selling that data, then why would anyone be outraged over this specific scenario?
Digory
Yes. I think it's fair to say Unroll.me wasn't being honest about data use.

The service was supposed to identify spammy e-mail by address or subject, and file them away. It's part of the business model to screen e-mail addresses and subject lines, I suppose. And I could understand them selling analytics on the contents of rolled-up items -- Wal-Mart wants to know what Target is selling, and demographics about those receiving offers, etc. You'd get some interesting data about what offers actually get clicks, too.

But the NYT article says they're selling numerical data out of Lyft receipts. That's not spam. At no point did they disclose they would troll through your non-spam e-mail for words or numbers interesting to the highest bidder.

newsat13
All companies must have basic ethics. It's a given that nobody reads EULA, privacy & terms documents. Given that, each company must take the responsibility to explain to the customer what it knows will be objectionable. For example, if Lyft sold me travel information to 3rd parties, I expect them to tell me this up front and not hide this behind some legalese.