Sears agrees to delete users’ private data but denies any wrongdoing

Sears Holding Corporation, owner of Sears, has agreed to settle spyware charges. Also it will delete all the information about customers' most intimate web habits collected by the software. Additionally to that, the company agreed to be more honest about any data it can gather in the future. The agreement by Sears came in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in which the company didn't admit it violated any laws.

As it is known, Sears sent emails to people shortly after they provided their address at Sears.com with invitation to join an "exciting online community." In fact, they installed software named ComScore that monitored people’s every online move. According to FTC, the information collected contains "not only information about websites consumers visited and links that they clicked, but also the text of secure pages, such as online banking statements, video rental transactions, library borrowing histories, online drug prescription records, and select header fields that could show the sender, recipient, subject, and size of web-based email messages.” The software also recorded non-internet-related activities of the computer users.

The reason for the FTC and privacy advocates to sue Sears is their fail to disclose that users’ information was being collected until page 10 of a 54-page privacy statement. "Respondent failed to disclose adequately that the software application, when installed, would" monitor just about every internet activity taking place on the machine, including those protected by secure sessions, a complaint filed by FTC lawyers stated. "Respondent’s failure to disclose these facts, in light of the representations made, was, and is, a deceptive practice."

The FTP didn’t make a separate allegation that Seals failed to protect customers’ information. But Edelman, a Harvard University professor who is a frequent critic of spyware companies, said the FTC settlement amounted to a victory anyway.