On Fri, 12 Jun 1998, Jack Killpatrick wrote: > > > > Interesting one. I'd hazard a guess that in most legal jurisdictions when > > you buy a company you also by all assets and liabilities with it, and all > > written and implied guarantees and warranties. In other words, you have to > > abide by any privacy guarantees given by the company you've purchased. > > Can anyone confirm? You sure do . . . for all of the .5 seconds it would take to change them :P If the company is worth buying out, there's fine print in their policies somewhere that reserves the right to change poilcies at will, and without notice to the consumer. I read yesterday that Mirabilis is being bombarded with email from concerned users. They seem to be pitching a line that they will remain purely independent, and that their technology will be used seperately in AOL products. This, though, nicely dodges the issue of what happens to back-end data. I, personally, deleted my ICQ this week. :P > Now, granted, many users probably only give the minimum, or a fraction of > the info that they could provide, and may probably give bogus info, but I > guess what gets under my skin, and what seems like an issue, is: > > 1) many people probably DO give real data > 2) people may not have supplied such detailed data if AOL was the owner when > the data was supplied > 3) the data has now been bought AND, if I look at the ICQ/AOL literature > correctly, Mirabilis has said they will follow their own current policies > (above), which means that AOL will follow the policies, which means there is > now a powerhouse available to use that data AND combine it with data already > culled from matching AOL subscribers. The problem is, the damn thing is linked to email as well, and if you wantto use to effectively, you reealy need an accurate email. No matter how much garbage info you provide, it won't be long (if they haven't figured it out already) until bots will be surfing the net looking for your net postings, and nicely correcting your bogus address for the nice people at AOL by using your sig line :P I'm registered at Microsoft's site with Bill Gate's name. Didn't seem to stop them from finding correct info on me to spam and snail mail me :p B ____________________________________________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done directly from our website for all our lists. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
