RadioShack's demise left techies with one place to buy gizmos and their information on the auction block: Customer data that the retailer collected over decades was among the assets for sale to the higher bidder as part of RadioShack's bankruptcy.
Tens of millions of customer records are up for sale, including more than 66 million containing information about the physical addresses of shoppers and 8 million associated with emails along with "transaction data," according to the Associated Press - despite promises not to sell data to third parties in the company's privacy policy.
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The move drew objections from dozens of state attorneys general and companies like AT&T and Apple, which partnered with the retailer to market their products. And now the government's privacy watchdog, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has weighed in with a letter to court-appointed consumer privacy ombudsman in the bankruptcy case.
"We understand that RadioShack's customer information constitutes a potentially valuable asset," FTC Consumer Protection Director Jessica Rich wrote in the May 16 letter. "We are concerned, however, that a sale or transfer of the personal information of RadioShack's customers would contravene RadioShack's express promise not to sell or rent such information and could constitute a deceptive or unfair practice under Section 5 of the FTC Act."