Attention Kmart Shoppers: Your Bank Info Is Being Monitored
Sears has come clean about quietly collecting sensitive data on customers. The good news: Your privacy violation was included in the Blue Light Special!
Martha Stewart’s business partner, it appears, has been cooking up quite the little scheme. Sears Holdings, parent company of both Sears and Kmart, has confessed it monitored and stored customers’ bank statements, prescription records, even library and video rental histories — all without explicit permission. How’s that for in-store savings?
The whole thing happened as part of a program called “My SHC Community.” Visitors to sears.com and kmart.com were offered a pretty present of $10 in exchange, essentially, for their digital privacy. Of course, they probably didn’t realize that at the time.
The program claimed to install shopping research software onto your computer, a newly released Federal Trade Commission report reveals, that would “track your online browsing.” By “track your online browsing,” of course, Sears meant it would record every move you made on every Web site, secure or not. But it was an “exciting, engaging, and ongoing interaction” — and, for $10, who could turn that down?
In addition to the banking and health data, the FTC now says Sears’ program monitored and recorded information about e-mails sent — recipients, subjects, and message sizes. If that’s not enough, the software also kept tabs on your offline activity. (Yes, that means the porn you downloaded and later viewed was likely recorded, too. Sorry.)
But hey, at least Sears is being upfront about the whole thing. Now, two years later. After the FTC launched an investigation. And demanded Sears destroy the data. And never do this again.
For all those reasons and so many more, we’re proud to award Sears Holdings with the eSarcasm Salute, our dubious and often disregarded distinction for the worst offenders within the tech world. Congratulations, dear friends. We’ll be mailing a motion-detecting, sound-recording, GPS-enabled plaque for you to install in your CEO’s vehicle. Consider it an “exciting, engaging, and ongoing” sign of our support.
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