Gates to Privacy Rescue? Riiight!

[Tim May]

At 2:27 PM -0800 12/10/00, petro wrote:
>Mr. May:
>
>>
>>The author also mentions that consumers dislike (so?) tracking of 
>>their purchases...and then in the next paragraphs cites the 
>>Firestone tire recall as an example of better policy than most Web 
>>sites have (or something like this...I re-read his analogy several 
>>times and still wasn't sure what his claim was). But
>	I took that statement to mean that if Firestone exercised the 
>same level of diligence in the engineering of their tires that most 
>web sites used, they would be recalling a *LOT* more tires, enough 
>to make the current recall a drop in the bucket.

Sure, but I was making the point that this is an ironic example, as 
it was the records which Firestone and Ford kept of their customers 
which allowed them to send recall letters out to those customers!

(I just got Yet Another Letter from Ford, which I haven't opened. The 
last couple have exhorted me to _please_ make arrangements with a 
local dealer to have the Firestone tires on my Explorer replaced.)

I got a similar letter from Costco, the giant box store, saying that 
a _rope light_ I bought at some time in the past--their letter gave 
the exact date--has been recalled due to the chance that it may burst 
into flames under certain circumstances.

(When it gets wet, as the waterproofing was faulty. Inasmuch as I use 
these rope lights to illuminate and heat the interior of my gun safe, 
I ignored the letter.)

There are technological solutions for how companies can notify 
customers without knowing what customers buy, obviously. Nyms, cut 
out accounts, agents which send ticklers, etc.

This was not my point, only the irony of citing the Firestone recall 
in a discussion of how companies are tracking purchases.

But since the word "irony" has been removed from all current dictionaries....


--Tim May
-- 
(This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the
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