I hate spam. Opt-out is the minimum that I expect from all decent sites. Opt-in would be nicer.
Imagine my surprise when I received the following card in the mail:
When I opted-out, I thought I was sending a clear message to the company that I didn’t want them to contact me and send me adverts and other junk I don’t need.
But it looks like smart lawyers found a loophole: apparently I only opted-out of receving e-mail communications. I didn’t opt-out of receiving regular mail, phone calls, personal visits at night, or being followed by car everywhere I go.
Standing outside my windows with a megaphone yelling “special offers” and “marketing suggestions”? I guess their legal department would see nothing wrong with it.
I was curious so I read Google’s privacy policy again. I couldn’t find a good definition of what opting-out meant:
For certain services, such as our advertising programs, we also request credit card or other payment account information which we maintain in encrypted form on secure servers.
I don’t know how good Google’s encryption is, but printing my full name and address on a postcard without my consent doesn’t sound like strong encryption to me. And yes, my physical address falls into the payment information category. Why else would I provide it to Google? Everything is done by e-mail.
We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services. For certain services, we may give you the opportunity to opt out of combining such information
I love the expression “provide you with a better experience.” It’s a blanket statement that effectively authorizes Google to legally do whatever they want with my personal information, since they can rationalize pretty much any behavior by claiming that it’s for my own good. Combined with the fact that they may or may not let me opt-out, I don’t feel too good about my options.
The full card is below:
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