I will suggest this article by Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times should be required reading by all consumers:
Millions of RadioShack customers — as many as 117 million — may have taken the gadget chain at its word when it pledged that it would safeguard their personal information forever.
“We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to anyone at any time,” the chain stated on its website. At the checkout registers in its stores, a placard read: “At RadioShack, we respect your privacy. … We pride ourselves on not selling our private mailing list.”
But RadioShack is now in bankruptcy, and its mailing list and hoard of customers’ personally identifiable information have been — guess what? — placed up for sale.
The full article my be found at http://goo.gl/dlWNnX.
Should companies therefore vest their customer lists and associated personal data in a trust which can only licence the data back to that company?
If the company does not own the data it cannot be put up for sale by the receivers or liquidators of a bankrupt company?
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