[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Barcey

Dennis, everyone draws their personal privacy lines at a different place but the question is what gives any company the right to collect personal information and why would you assume that they're treating the data they collect with appropriate security.

<shrug>

Amazon specifies what data they capture. If I don't like their policies, I have the choice of not using their service. They have a right to collect whatever they desire, so long as the tell me they are doing it. I have to right to not patronize them if I don't like it.

Are they treating it with appropriate security? I have no idea. I'd like to think so. There have certainly been enough high profile breaches of security permitting possible leaks of personal data, so they are certainly conscious of the need to do so, and have the technical capability.

I don't own a Kindle, and purchase little from amazon, so I'm not terribly affected one way or the other.

Let's take Amazon out of the picture. The iPhone 3G has wireless connectivity and a built in GPS. It has the technical capability to track where I am 24 hours a day and report the data back to Apple. Should I ask why would Apple care where I was and why would I assume they would want the information? Maybe you wouldn't care if they did something like that but I sure would. If someone used the information to rob your house while you were out of town I imagine you would care. (Yes I know Apple wouldn't be stupid enough to do this).

No, Apple wouldn't be stupid enough to do it. What would they gain?

And anyone who wanted to rob my home wouldn't require GPS data leaked from my iPhone. They'd simply do what housebreakers have done since long before GPS systems (or personal electronics of any kind) were prevalent. They'd case the joint a few days to determine I wasn't home and wouldn't be back for a while. (Unless they were drug addicts looking for valuables they could exchange for a fix, in which whether I was at home might not cross their minds.)

GMail isn't free. You pay for it by selling your email privacy to Google. If you're willing to pay that price that's fine with me.

Who said anything about free? As it happens, it is, but that's not the main reason I use it. I like the storage space, the ability to check my mail from anywhere I have an Internet connection and a browser, and the ability to treat my mail as a searchable database with index keys I define.

As for email privacy, see my comment earlier. I have never considered email secure communications, and I simply don't say things in email that are all that private or sensitive. If I need to, I can break out GPG and encrypt my communications using public key encryption, but thus far, I've never needed to. Want to read my GMail? Prepare for massive boredom. The vast majority of the 2GB+ currently on Google's servers are from technical mailing lists and notifications of new posts in places like this. Only a tiny fraction is all that private or personal, and even that would not be distressing were it to become public.

I reserve my worries about privacy and security for things that would cause a problem if they became public.

I think it's a good thing that people challenge companies about the data they collect and how they do it. I don't think we should trust companies to handle the data appropriately.

I don't think it's sufficient to bury the fact that they're collecting the information in a 50 page end user agreement that nobody reads. If a company want to collect information about me they should have to get my explicit agreement with the default that I opt out.

I largely agree. But in the meantime, the sorts of concerns raised here seem to assume that the data being tracked will be misused in ways the people concerned wouldn't like. I draw a distinction between "could be", and "will be".

The question I ask isn't "Could the following bad things happen?". It's "Granted that they could, how likely is it?" My feeling is generally "Not enough to worry hard about". Granted, I could be in error. thus far, in my own online dealings, I haven't been.

Meanwhile, I'm not a Kindle user, buy very little from Amazon (and that mainly from Amazon UK, for things like British editions of Terry Pratchett and Tom Holt books). And even if I were and they developed a profile of my reading habits, about all they'd discover is "Gee! This guy reads everything!"

Well, not quite, but my catholic tastes and omnivorous reading habits have never been a secret.
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Dennis