Free Republic

McDonald’s compiled a 515-page dossier on one of its loyalty-program customers — using years of fast-food purchases to predict how often he would return, how much he would spend and even what he was likely to order. Reece Rogers, a journalist for Condé Nast-owned Wired magazine, discovered the extensive digital profile after requesting the personal data McDonald’s had stored about him. The file revealed a “Minority Report”-style trove of predictions about his future behavior, including that he would visit McDonald’s 2.16 times over the next six weeks and spend an average of $13.49 per order. The fast-food giant calculated Rogers...

The dismissal of lawsuits brought against Northwest Airlines has online privacy advocates renewing calls for federal privacy legislation. In a decision dated June 6, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson ruled that seven consolidated class action lawsuits against Northwest had no merit--in part because the privacy policy posted on the airline's Web site was unenforceable unless plaintiffs claimed to have read it. The plaintiffs had contended that the airline, in giving passenger information to the government in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, violated laws and its own privacy policy. "Although Northwest had a privacy policy for...

Pressed for profits, Internet companies are increasingly selling access to their users' postal mail addresses and telephone numbers, in addition to flooding their e-mail boxes with junk mail. Yahoo (news/quote), the vast Internet portal, just changed its privacy policy to make it clear that it has the right to send mail and make sales calls to tens of millions of its registered users. And it has given itself permission to send users e-mail marketing messages on behalf of its own growing family of services, even if those users had previously asked not to receive any marketing from Yahoo. Users have...