On Fri, Oct 08, 2021 at 12:32:34PM -0700, William Morder via tde-users wrote: > As I said earlier (I think it was the previous thread), the data ought never > to be collected in the first place. How do you propose that companies bill their customers if they are prohibited from collecting data such as name, address, phone number and services provided? I work for an electrician. I cannot imagine how we could possibly have customers at all if we can't record their address. Before I worked for the electrician, I worked for an IT company. Most of the time we could service their systems remotely, and so you might argue that we didn't need to know their physical address or name, only their IP address. But knowing their physical address and name protected us if they failed to pay their bill. My car mechanic knows my name, my address, phone number, the make and model of my car, and when it is due for a service. He sends me a reminder when it is due for a service, and a warning if there is a recall on the car or its parts. He couldn't do that without collecting my personal data. > There can be no ethical use of another > person's private information, when collected by such stealthy means and using > disingenous justifications. I bought some books online yesterday. I prefer bricks and mortar shops, but we're in lockdown here so it was online or nothing. While I was purchasing, the website -- **not** Amazon -- showed me suggestions "Other people who bought this book also purchased...". Do you think that is unethical? About twice a year the electrician I work for runs through the list of customers that have solar panels that we installed or serviced, and send them a reminder email that the panels should be cleaned yearly and serviced every few years for best effectiveness. Do you think that is unethical? The insidiousness of the online privacy issue is that there is no hard line between acceptable and unacceptable marketing. Its a slipperly slope that starts at the foundations of the free market commerce and ends with Facebook installing a chip in your brain to monitor everything you do, and Google having veto over what you say to your friends down the pub in case you make a "prohibited claim". https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1446576873694187522 I'm not saying that there is no line that should not be crossed, but such blanket demands as "no data collection at all!" is unrealistic, impractical, and cuts at the root of basic commerce. -- Steve ____________________________________________________ tde-users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Web mail archive available at https://mail.trinitydesktop.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
