No Hacking Requird

You thought your personal information was personal.

Now it's up for sale using the courts. Their should be some court battles with this one.

From your friend Radio Shack.

RadioShack puts customer personal data up for sale in bankruptcy auction | PCWorld

• Mar 25, 2015 7:23 AM
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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

I haven't seen a radio shack around for a long time
There was one but it closed years ago
Way to close to a new Fry's store

Yes the stores are gone or sold to others.

I'm thinking the point is at least to me.
When a company hits hard times can they sell your personal information legally.
Is customers information that has been gathered as asset that can be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

We know hackers steal this kind of information and sell it. Course it's not legal.
Now can this type of information be sold legally to me is the question.

I suppose we'll find out eventually what comes from that since Texas AG is already on it :)

Bankrupt RadioShack wants to sell off user data. But the bigger risk is if a Facebook or Google goes bust. - The Washington Post

A Guy

I can't say I see those two ever going bust but out of the two Facebook seems more likely than Google :)
You never know when another social network will arise and steal FB's thunder.

What a world we live in, where your personal data is such a tangible item that it can actually be sold for big $$$$$. The times they are a changin'. Not that stores haven't always preferred to know your shopping habits & kept track of them, but lately it seems there's a huge increase in grabbing & monitoring your personal habits & preferences.

This just goes to show you have to really think twice before putting your personal data in the hands of a company. As stated in an article I read a long time back, sure, the company promises not to sell your data. But what happens if that company files for bankruptcy or gets bought out by another company. The new owners of that company may have no qualms about selling your personal data to the highest bidder.

Not that it seems there's too much you can do about it. At some point you'll have to disclose a bit of information about yourself. You can't predict which company is going to change hands/go under. Sooner or later (if not already), some or most of our personal data will end up (or more then likely already is) on a database or 2 somewhere.

From what I've been reading about this... A company can just choose to sell their customer list... AT&T is one
I read about in fact,... now there's a lot of people upset... We shall see what happens with this new communication
bill being discussed.

ThrashZone said:

I can't say I see those two ever going bust but out of the two Facebook seems more likely than Google :)
You never know when another social network will arise and steal FB's thunder.

Nobody thought MySpace would decline like it did; it's all but dead now.