Uber wasn't the only company to suffer PR damage from the recent New York Times article on CEO Travis Kalancik. The piece also revealed that email decluttering service Unroll.me has been mining your messages and selling this data to the ride-hailing firm, leading to one of the worst non-apologies ever released - even by CEO standards.
Unroll.me owner Slice Intelligence collected customers' emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the information to Uber for an undisclosed fee, according to the Times. Slice has since confirmed it collects receipt data from both Lyft and Uber but didn't say who it sells it to.
Responding to the anger expressed by Uroll.me users, CEO Jojo Hedaya posted an apology titled 'We can do better' to the company blog. He called the reaction to the Times piece "heartbreaking," but didn't actually say sorry; instead, he appears to blame customers for not reviewing the ToS agreement closely enough.
And while we try our best to be open about our business model, recent customer feedback tells me we weren't explicit enough. Sure we have a Terms of Service Agreement and a plain-English Privacy Policy that our users agree they have read and understand before they even sign up, but the reality is most of us - myself included - don't take the time to thoroughly review them.
Surprisingly, people aren't reacting well to this sorry not sorry message. Much like HP's apology for blocking third-party ink cartridges last year, Unroll.me is only apologizing for not being more explicit about their shady practice.
As noted by The Verge, many people who use Unroll.me are now demanding their data be destroyed after they delete their accounts. The company hasn't said if it will do so.
Yes, Unroll.me isn't the first free service that sells anonymized customer data, and it won't be the last. But as one user wrote: "Pretty simple solution. Just put "We read your email and sell the data we gather" in your signup form, then put the remainder of the explanation in your privacy policy."
"Anyone who reads the full privacy policy, understands what you're doing with their data and is cool with that, will be fine sticking with the service. Which in theory is everyone you want to sign up anyway."