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Juno And Privacy
Posted by
michael
on Fri Feb 02, 2001 05:18 AM
from the water-and-oil dept.
from the water-and-oil dept.
Karl Weiss writes: "Section 2.5 of the Juno Privacy Policy has some very interesting statements in it - you authorize them to download an app to track your usage and you can't do anything about it, you are to keep your computer on 24/7, or give them the right to make your computer call out at their desire, and they can install a screen saver on your computer with ads, and you can't get rid of it. Obviously this bothers me, but the real kicker as far as I'm concerned is that they will allow third parties to use the downloaded software. Does M$ looking for pirated software sound like a player? Or what happens if someone cracks the software? Does that open your hard drive data to anyone? As the senior network instructor at a large private computer school, I have advised faculity and staff to not use Juno due to these requirments." It looks like the few remaining free ISPs are searching for ways to make up advertising income during the dot-com meltdown, and the "solution" they've come up with is to make use of their users' computers to do distributed processing. Will Juno users realize what they are agreeing to?
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Juno and Privacy
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Re:Why is this an issue? (Score:3)
This is clearly posted in their privacy policy and terms of service.
...which, assuming Juno is your only ISP, they can change without notice while you're offline, then you implicitly agree to while you connect to them, before you even have a chance to read it. Dirty pool.
People are smart enough to read and understand TOS's, if they choose not to then they shouldn't act surprised when revelations like this occur.
The problem with this logic is that, quite frankly, our society goes out of it's way to tell people "You're not smart enough to understand legalese - that's why laywers go to law school" -- so the average Joe, who may or may not actually be smart enough, and posess an advanced enough vocabulary to comprehend the legalese, generally doesn't think that they CAN understand it, so why bother reading it. Most people in the US at least are sheep. They trust others implicitly when it comes to stuff like this. They trust Juno NOT to have crap like this in their agreement -- not that that's right at all, I'm just making a point here.
Using Juno is a choice. If you don't like their choices, DON'T use them.
I agree wholeheartedly - but WE'RE not the ones who need to know about this. The "sheep" need to know about this. I like the idea that someone came up with about spamming Juno's users with an email about exactly what their TOS allows...
Juno is without an explicit cost, but nothing in life is free.
Ah yes. True again. But Juno goes out of their way to hide the nefarious stuff in the legalese of their agreement. Nowhere on their website or in their advertizing materials do they even pay lip service to "Computational Software" or "You must keep your computer on 24/7 or we reserve the right to take it away from you, store it in our bunker in the middle of the pacific ocean, and charge you for the electricity and long-distance charges". Their advertrizing basically ammounts to "Free, easy email! Use us!"
It's a stunning slap to the face in the name of "always read the fine print" though.
Re:TANSTAFL (Score:3)
You or I wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole, but there actually is a fair fraction of the public which doesn't care who knows where they browse, and which doesn't have any idea of the other risks. After all, many people don't mind their local drug store tracking their purchases through discount cards. And if purchase data helps the drugstore keep the things people buy in in stock and makes the ad flyers they receive more likely to have the stuff they want in them, why, that's just making a happier (if violated) customer.
ISP's (and to a lesser extent, portals) can go even farther, and anticipate interest in particular products based on browsing behavior. Yet another step toward happy consumerdom: if they get good enough at their tracking, you'll never have to see an ad you aren't interested in. Joe consumer is supposed to enjoy that his privacy is being pimped to the highest bidder. And, sadly enough, there is evidence that this may indeed be so. (That doesn't mean that Juno will be able to actually pull off this marketer's wet dream, of course.)
That said, the distributed-computing angle of this is actually pretty interesting as a way of generating income for Juno. It will be a lot easier for them, as an ISP, to administer this sort of system than for a stand-alone enterprise to do so. Yes, the security issues are mind-boggling, and the near-inevitable scandal that results will probably kill them (if nothing else does first). But it's an idea that will likely succeed at some point, even if Juno fails.
Think mean-time-to-failure, not just availability (Score:3)
Excluding hardware problems, if a computer <b>requires</b> a reboot to avoid problems there's only two possible causes: either resources are being consumed and not released as appropriate (the biggest headache with Netscape), or coding errors are causing random corruption of data structures. Since Windows tends to "flake out" instead of announcing "resource not available," it sounds like it's random corruption of data structures.
Nobody is stupid enough (I hope) to say that Unix is totally bug-free, but its architecture limits the damage a buggy application can do to others, and the system itself, so it's common to hear of heavily loaded systems running for several years without problem.
On the other hand, a mostly idle Windows system will usually become unusable within a week. In practice, I've rarely seen a MIS department that didn't recommend a "preventative reboot" nightly, or at least every other night. This suggests that the code contains a tremendous number of very serious coding errors -- and there are very, very few products where a MTTF of a few days to a week is acceptable. Could you imagine using a refrigerator which had to be unpluggedand reach room temperature weekly, or else it might go beserk and either freeze the food rock-hard or heat up like an oven?
Re:don't think so. (Score:3)
There is probably lots of stuff on most peoples computers that is not send around on the Internet (personal letters, job-related documents, etc). So I would say there is a great difference!
Compare, hidden cameras are installed in most public areas, but most likely not in your bedroom (unless you are a pervert).
Oh my (Score:3)
1. They can download stuff to your computer and make it do work.
2. It works like a screen saver and you are not ALLOWED to disable it. You also cannot un-install Windows or they will simply kill you.
3. They can make your computer call their servers to upload results and any other thing they find on your computer, because you wont know.
4. They may require you to keep your computer on 24 hours a day, and oh by the way are NOT responsible for the electricity it consumes. Why should they be, you're stupid not to have read the policy in the first place.
5. They are not responsible for any damages caused by your computer working on a problem while you are not on it. This will probably include very intensive Mathematical Calculations that I know a overclocked processor will just love.
6. They can send someone to your house to turn your computer on if you leave it off. Why not. It would be funny. That same person can also connect your computer back to the phone line becuase you disconnected it because it was calling their servers 5 states away.
7. They can all laugh at you for actually agreeing to this. Then having Jim win the office pool becasue he guessed right on the amount of people that never will read the agreement anyway.
Finally Juno can do anything it damn well programs its software to do on your computer all in the name of Freedom from Paying for the NET!
Come on People bend over and pay $20 a month for a real ISP, one that doesn't basically put an employee looking over your shoulder at your computer anytime you use it.
I dont see how companies like this actually work.
Lord Arathres
TANSTAFL (Score:3)
Guess what? Juno isn't free. it simply charges a different pound of flesh. And, as it keeps finding that it can't survive on what it's getting from you, it raises it's price. Only their price isn't cash.
If this doesn't finally kill them off, I'll be amazed. I see it as a sign of desperation that they've finally hit this level of invasion to try to find ways to avoid actually charging money like everyone else.
Juno is simply proving that putting it on the internet doesn't make it immune to business realities -- or Darwin.
leave your computer running 24/7 (Score:4)
(sorry, couldn't resist)
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Compare that. (Score:4)
I guess it pays ... (Score:4)
I'm getting slightly nervous here
Prior art!? (Score:5)
I actually proposed something like that in a department meeting held on April 1 back in 1980 (maybe 1981) so those who were running long simulations wouldn't get disconnected by the silly IBM terminal controller from the campus VM/CMS system. No keyboard activity for fifteen minutes and you got clobbered. (Tentative funding for the project was approved until initial project team discussions revealed that the only place where anyone could remember seeing one of the birds was at a Stuckey's on the Ohio turnpike and enthusiasm for the project waned quickly.)
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The Plain Englidh Version (Score:5)
1. Service
1.1. This contract is binding.
1.2. But not on us.
2. Your Obligations
2.1. You give us the right to know anything about you that takes our fancy.
2.2. Or about anyone else, for that matter.
2.3. You cough up any connection charges. Notice how we keep this separate from paragraph 2.5.
2.4. You agree to eat spam.
2.5. pH33r u5! w3 @re 1337 h4x0r5. We will make your PC dial our POPs. They might even be local calls. W3 0wn j00r 5cr33n 54v3r. We want your pr0n. We wish to use your computer in a distributed processing scheme for our company's purposes.
2.6. You acknowledge that the Service is provided only for personal use by you and members of your household, and not for corporate or excessive commercial use or for use by organizations or other groups of users. Unless they're us.
2.7. You may or not get your email, our distributed processing requirements notwithstanding. We cannot plan or manage our servers, so there's no telling how long your mail's going to sit on our server.
3. Content
3.1. We can't possibly take any responsibility for or action over norty stuff floating about on the net. Unless you put it there. Or tried to.
3.2. If you're stealing stuff, we don't even want to know about it.
3.3. Oh, and we own your IP, too.
4. Software License
4.1. We'll even let you use the software by which we own you.
4.2. Hell, we'll even let you inf^Hstall it on other peoples' PCs!
4.3. Until you try to exercise your fair use rights.
4.4. Or even export it.
4.5. Or work for the guv'mint.
4.6. We really do own you.
5. Fees
5.1. You even enjoy the privilege of paying for all of this.
5.2. And there's just so many fun ways to do it!
5.3. And for us to collect it.
5.4. And, what's more, we'll just do it for you!
5.5. But you still get to pay for non-free (beer) stuff.
6. No Warranties
6.1. No kidding.
6.2. No, really!
6.3. No warranties here.
6.4. None here, either, no siree!
7. Indemnification
Nor responsibility, either.
8. Termination
8.1. We can cut you off at any time we like. Anything you put on our servers can no longer be accessed by you. Not that you ever owned it, anyway.
8.2. If you don't like it, you can always leave. After you pay us.
9. Miscellaneous
9.1. Don't even think of trying to slime out of this contract.
9.2. Put your lawyers away. If any part of this agreement is held to be unenforceable, we're going to enforce it anyway. We have more money than you.
9.3. And bought the laws to protect us.
10. For Quebec Residents Only
Our legal staff can't speak French.
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No (Score:5)
My experience with Juno users is that they have been of two types. The first type is people who were dislocated from their previous ISP, typically AOL or Compuserve by their parents, and installed Juno to be able to get back online without their parents knowledge. The second type is of people who have no clue what this "Internet" thing is they keep hearing about, and they sure as gosh darn heck don't wanna have to pay, so they use a free server, and really don't even use it.
Of course, I'm omitting the third type, which are skr1pt k1dd13s who want to think they are secure from tracking by using these free servers, but I don't really count them as people, but more as illiterate brutes
In the first case, the kids don't care how they get online as long as they can get back to their chat/message boards/surfing/porn, and in the second case, they are too baffled by legalese to ever realize whats going on. As for the skr1pt k1dd13s, heck, let Microsoft get them for hacking their servers [yahoo.com] and stealing their source code [zdnet.co.uk], its no skin off my back to see those brats busted.
I think the bigger question instead of "Do Juno users realize what they are agreeing to" is "Is this ethical? And more importantly, is this right?"