“The remnants of RadioShack’s retail empire went on the auction block on Monday, giving bidders the first chance to snap up the company’s trademarks, patents, leases—and the names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers of millions of RadioShack customers,” Joshua Brustein reports for Bloomberg. “The company included personal data in its bankruptcy auction as its own asset class. A website maintained by Hilco Streambank, which is serving as an intermediary for RadioShack, says that more than 13 million e-mail addresses and 65 million customer names and physical address files are for sale. Hilco Streambank is careful to note that the bankruptcy court might not approve the deals, and there have already been two legal filings in attempts to block the sale of customer data.”
“The broader challenge, filed last week by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, argues that RadioShack made an explicit promise to its customers not to sell their personal data,” Brustein reports. “Paxton claims that 117 million people are included in RadioShack’s customer data sale, which he says offers some details about shopping habits. The filing cites text from a sign displayed in RadioShack stores reading: ‘We pride ourselves on not selling our private mailing list.’ State law in Texas prohibits companies from selling personally identifiable information in a way that violates their own privacy policies. On Monday, Tennessee’s attorney general joined Texas’s objection.”
“Whether RadioShack’s attempt to sell customer data withstands legal challenge could come down to the structure of the sale,” Brustein reports. “An FTC spokeswoman pointed toward a 2011 letter addressing the bankruptcy of Borders, the bookstore chain, as a general statement of its approach to the issue. In that letter, the FTC said it realized that bankruptcy is a special case and agreed not to oppose the sale of personal data—with several conditions. The data couldn’t be sold as a stand-alone asset, the buyer had to be in the same line of business as the seller, and the buyer must agree to adhere to the same privacy policy.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “The buyer must agree to adhere to the same privacy policy?” What’s that, the privacy policy that says customers’ personal data isn’t for sale until the outfit goes bankrupt? Sheesh.
RadioShack. The worst-managed company on the planet gets even worse on its deathbed.
Godspeed to the Texas and Tennessee Attorneys General and to anyone else who tries to block the sale of RadioShack’s customer data.
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