Recently, Pandora - the online music company along with others have been accused of sharing their customer information with businesses illegally. When Pandora was just subpoenaed by a Federal grand jury, the company Veracode found that the claims are very valid. Is this latest news really new information? Didn't we kind of expect this already? Most companies will say "Please give us all your info: Name, email, phone, address, age, how did you hear about us?, will you be shopping again in the next 1, 3, 6, 9, 12 months?, sign up for our newsletter, would you like to hear about specials from us and *our affilliates?".
I figure that once I give the company the information and the permission for them or their affiliates to contact me, I really can't be unhappy about it. I assume my information is being used to their benefit.
Now I use and love Pandora’s service on my Motorola Droid, on my Samsung Blu-Ray player, and the Motorola Xoom and it helped me eliminate the XM Radio subscription I was paying for in my truck. Now I just play Pandora music wirelessly through my stereo with bluetooth.
If I was going to share a concern I have, my main problem is not with Pandora sharing my information (I think that’s how they offer music so cheap), but with the movie theaters. I do think that if you pay almost 10 bucks per ticket for a movie & seemingly $100,000 for a bucket of popcorn with a box of peanut M&Ms and a drink YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO WATCH A COMMERCIAL FOR COCA-COLA, THE NEXT EPISODE OF HOUSE, or anything else. I don't have an issue with the movie previews that are played and honestly they are the one thing that I actually look forward to when I’m at the theater. With that said however, if I have to sit and watch anything other than previews or the movie, then let me watch the movie for FREE just like I do TV.
So next time when someone says that a company is sharing your personal information, ask them “when are we going to do something about the movies?”.
Source: http://techland.time.com/2011/04/08/pandora-android-app-secretly-transmits-sensitive-data-to-ad-companies/
