For years on Christmas Eve I would buy a last minute gift at Radio Shack, it was across the street from the mall and it was open later than other stores. I always couldn’t stand them asking for my phone number or email address when I was just trying to get out of there.
For fans of Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer wondered about Radio Shack from this classic clip:
Well it seems now Radio Shack wants to sell that data and as Mike would say, No Bueno.
From PC World:
For years, RadioShack made a habit of collecting customers’ contact information at checkout. Now, the bankrupt retailer is putting that data on the auction block.
A list of RadioShack assets for sale includes more than 65 million customer names and physical addresses, and 13 million email addresses. Bloomberg reports that the asset sale may include phone numbers and information on shopping habits as well.
The auction is already over, with Standard General—a hedge fund and RadioShack’s largest shareholder—reportedly emerging as the victor. But a bankruptcy court still has to approve the deal, and RadioShack faces a couple legal challenges in turning over customer data.
As Bloomberg points out, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has argued that selling the data would be illegal under state law. Texas doesn’t allow companies to sell personal information in a way the violates their own privacy policies, and signage in RadioShack stores claims that “We pride ourselves on not selling our private mailing list.” Paxton believes that a data sale would affect 117 million people.
Read the full article on PC World
