eTour accused of selling customer info
By Greg Sandoval
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: May 25, 2001, 3:40 PM PDT 

Link(active as of 10/22/06): http://news.com.com/2100-1023-258344.html?legacy=cnet



Direct marketing company eTour violated its privacy policy when it 
sold some personal information about its 4.5 million customers to 
Ask Jeeves this week, a privacy watchdog group alleged Friday.

The Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center 
(EPIC) has sent letters to the Federal Trade Commission and several 
state attorneys general asking that they investigate eTour's sale of 
assets to Ask Jeeves.

eTour posts its privacy policy on its Web site, and in it, the 
company says it "will not give out your name, residence address, or 
e-mail address to any third parties without your permission, for any 
reason, at any time, ever."

Andrew Shen, a policy analyst for EPIC, said that despite what the 
company says on its site, eTour went out and sold that personal 
information.

Emeryville, Calif.-based Ask Jeeves, an online search engine, bought a 
portion of eTour's assets for an undisclosed amount of cash Tuesday, 
saying the purchase would help expand the range of its search results 
and enhance its advertising capability. Ask Jeeves said it will 
continue to operate the eTour Web site.

EPIC is comparing eTour's assets sale to last year's furor over 
Toysmart. The Disney-backed toy e-tailer shuttered its operations last 
May and began auctioning its assets. Included in the list of assets for 
sale to the highest bidder was its customers' personal information. Like 
eTour, Toysmart promised in its privacy policy that it would not share 
or sell that information.

A report by CNET News.com last June about Toysmart and other failed 
e-tailers drew protest from privacy groups, the FTC and more than 40 
state attorneys general. All charged that Toysmart had violated federal 
regulations.

A Federal bankruptcy judge eventually allowed Toysmart to sell the 
customer lists to Disney on the condition that the list be destroyed.

Heather Staples, a spokeswoman for Ask Jeeves, said lumping eTour and 
Toysmart together is not a fair comparison.

"Toysmart was selling the list for use of commercial purposes not agreed 
to by the user," Staples said. "We're assuming the privacy policy of the 
eTour site and we won't be selling it for anything not agreed to by the 
user."

Customer data can include information such as phone numbers, credit card 
numbers, home addresses and even statistics on shopping habits. eTour 
gathered information about its customers including names, ZIP codes, 
e-mail addresses, gender and personal interests. Some information that 
eTour asked for on a voluntary basis was a person's profession, housing 
status and income level.

Staples said Ask Jeeves will notify eTour users of the "asset transfer" and
will give them the option to not have their information included.

Shen said giving customers an opportunity to "opt out" of the transfer does 
not go far enough. He cited FTC rules that prohibit companies from 
participating in "unfair or deceptive business practices...The FTC must 
make companies live up to their promises."