Borders sells your purchasing history to cover their debts ..

Mac H. · Sep 18, 2011

You know that privacy policy? The one where Borders always claimed that they wouldn't sell their customer details to a third party?

Here it is: http://brd.rs/nGHOEh

An excerpt:

.. your purchase history, phone number(s), email and residential addresses, and credit card data—belongs to you. We collect this type of information to serve you better when you provide it to us, but we do not rent or sell your information to third parties.

Well, guess what. They've now sold it to cover help their debts. The details still need to be approved by the bankruptcy court - but a deal has been struck to sell it.

Here's the announcement that they have, in fact, sold off your details to a third party: http://bit.ly/pRR2fk

.. court documents also listed Borders’s membership lists, customer information, including contact information and e-mail addresses and other purchasing history and related information, as among the assets to be auctioned

Wow - that sounds like the very details which Borders claimed they would never sell !

This is one of the tricky issues with bankruptcy - it doesn't matter what the company (pre-bankruptcy) promised they would do with the asset - the creditors are within their rights to claim the asset and do what they like with it.

Imagine I buy a car off you and promise I'll never take it drag racing. You can hold me to that promise. But if I go bankrupt and my creditors sell off my car to recover my debts - whoever buys the car is under no obligation to respect my promise to you. Nor is the creditor obliged to only sell the asset (my car) under the same promise that I made to you.

That's what happens - all of those privacy policies are meaningless.

Borders sold off your private details in exchange for cash - even though they 100% undeniably assured you that they would never do that.

And there's nothing you can do about it.

SPMiller · Sep 18, 2011

Got some bad news for you: most companies already sell your purchase history. Market research is big business.

That said, note that the potential sale of this information was determined from "court documents". Who's to say Borders is willingly parting with it?

Mac H. · Sep 18, 2011

SPMiller said:
That said, note that the potential sale of this information was determined from "court documents". Who's to say Borders is willingly parting with it?

That's the frustrating thing - it doesn't matter what a website that promises privacy WANTS to do - once they go into bankruptcy I'd guess that the liquidator is legally obliged to sell every asset (including your personal details) for the top dollar they can get.

Mac

Alessandra Kelley · Sep 18, 2011

Ouch. This is why I never joined their buyers' club and always tried to pay for books with cash.

Hm. On the other hand, there's not much choice with online purchases. Would anyone like to contemplate the consequences if this happened to Amazon?

Plot Device · Sep 18, 2011

This tells me that the accumulated cache of customer information was deemed by the courts to be a "asset," and then that "asset" was seized by the courts against Borders' wishes.

This is heinous! A body of information is deemed an asset!

Can this definition of an "asset" possibly get applied to other bodies of information? Like health information? Employment information?

Plot Device · Sep 18, 2011

Mac H. said:
Imagine I buy a car off you and promise I'll never take it drag racing. You can hold me to that promise. But if I go bankrupt and my creditors sell off my car to recover my debts - whoever buys the car is under no obligation to respect my promise to you. Nor is the creditor obliged to only sell the asset (my car) under the same promise that I made to you.

That's what happens - all of those privacy policies are meaningless.

I don't think you car analogy holds up. Once I sell you a car, it's not mine any longer. There is zero question of "ownership" in that situation.

Allow me to tweak you analogy instead ..........

Imagine that you have a beautiful pedigree doggy worth thousands of dollars, and you have had that dog for 3 years now and you just love that dog to pieces. And then you and your spouse give birth to your first child, and the child turns out to be allergic to the doggy. So you have to remove the doggy from the house, but you really would prefer not to get rid of the dog all together. So you make an agreement with your next door neighbor whereby you "sell" the dog to your neighbor so that the dog can continue to be nearby and be sort of like one of the family. But then your neighbor's assets get seized, and the dog is deemed one of their assets so the dog likewise gets seized.

Frankly, I suspect that the scenario of you as the former dog owner would have an easier time of it in court trying to get custody of that dog away from the creditors than all those Borders customers would have getting back their privacy information.

areteus · Sep 18, 2011

In our house? I'm afraid its the child that would have to go...

This Borders thing does sound bad and I wonder how many test cases of this there have been - cases where there is a written policy and the creditors want to violate that policy.

Plot Device · Sep 18, 2011

areteus said:
In our house? I'm afraid its the child that would have to go...

I like doggies.

areteus said:
This Borders thing does sound bad and I wonder how many test cases of this there have been - cases where there is a written policy and the creditors want to violate that policy.

I guess it comes down to the courts deeming certain information "protected" or "not protected."

areteus · Sep 18, 2011

For various reasons, we have taken steps to make damn sure there is never a risk of there being an allergic child in our house and the dog is not the main one of them.

You may be right about it being what the courts decide. Thing is, if this is the first time this has happened it will set a precedent and that is a dangerous one to set which is why I wondered if there had been any previous cases that had set a precedent.

Mac H. · Sep 22, 2011

There's a hearing about it now:

Barnes & Noble, winner at auction of most of Borders Group's intellectual property assets, yesterday filed strenuous objections in bankruptcy court to several recommendations made by Michael St. Patrick Baxter, a consumer privacy ombudsman who was asked by the court to address privacy issues in the matter. "Implementing all of the recommendations contained in the CPO Report would destroy the value of the transaction," B&N said. The court is scheduled to address the IP auction today.

Ref: http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=1563#m13389

BTW - I just checked with Borders. In reply to an email:

Borders does not sell, trade, give away, or rent personal or company information, including email address, to any outside parties in ways other than disclosed in this Privacy Policy.

They are still saying that - despite the undisputed fact that they have just, in fact, sold my personal information to another company.

Mac

Borders sells your purchasing history to cover their debts ..

Mac H.

Board Visitor

SPMiller

Prodigiously Hanged

Mac H.

Board Visitor

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

areteus

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

areteus

Mac H.

Board Visitor