We had a baby recently and my wife and I were online shopping for breast pumps. Our health insurance company website redirected me to a website nam...
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Well, that's a clear violation of the CAN-SPAM U.S. Federal Law if there ever was one. The penalty for sending spam like that is $16,000 USD per violation with no limits enforceable by the FTC (i.e. if they send a mere 1,000 such messages, that's punishable for $16 million USD). And the Federal government sure could use the cash right now.
But it seems like you could do some exciting things with that form. Fill it in with: 'abuse@ theirwebhostingprovider.com' (whoever their provider is) in an Incognito window from a different WiFi network than yours and see what happens. If their system sends an automated email about breast pumps to their own hosting provider's abuse department, that will be quite difficult to explain away! "Um, we sent that message...because...um...we'll have to get back to you on that..."
Super funny, love it, it's basically trolling.
On the other hand they could be in range of law where they have the right to keep these things and send such emails. Some sites have Terms & Conditions which makes them avoid these kind of things. I don't think this can go directly under CAN-SPAM. You actually went to the site filled in email yourself willingly giving away the address. Now it might be in T&C on their site that you accept such thing if you proceed.
Problem for them might be that you didn't press "I accept / agree / Allow ..." and they just have the info somewhere hidden which I'm unsure how much would it make an issue for them.
Very true, Im sure they are not allowed to sell their platform to Canadian companies, I wish we had the same protection in the US but unfortunately we do not. I used to work for a couple of popular email marketing platforms and honestly the people who are buying this companies services/platform are idiots. This is a terrible way to target new customers. No one responds to spam mail well, the amount of click thru's and actual ROI you would see from a platform like this has to be very very low. You make a great point also that half of the data that they do acquire is most likely dirty data that isn't even useful! This is essentially a very legal scam.
It doesn't read to me as of they read the email address out of the form. What I think was going on is that he had freely given his email address to another customer of AddShoppers and AddShoppers passed it on to Aeroflow. So the problem is either browser fingerprinting or third party cookies. My bet is on the cookies.
They use liquidweb.com for those wondering!
Not cool, and the saddest part is that there are developers out there willing to facilitate this unethical behaviour. I would rather quit my job...
That's an awesome idea until you have kids.
No. That's a cop-out. I have kids; and I want to make the world a better place for them. If everyone makes a stand against this kind of crap then employers will stop expecting developers to screw over their fellow humans for the sake of a quick buck.
Fortunately my current employers also have appropriate ethical standards. If yours don't then start looking for another job; or better still raise you concerns with them. Case in point: I totally respect the Facebook employees making a stand over Zuckerberg's lame response to Trump's incitement to violence towards protesters in the US.
Then you'll agree to pay my mortgage (or rent), fill up my fridge, keep my lights on and keep my kids in their private schools (my choice, and I do not care if anyone disagrees).
Agreed, if everyone takes a stand, but that's not happening over something this trivial .. and I really like my life the way it is. This is not the hill I would even consider dying on; you can have it.
Your point would be valid if he wasn't a developer drowning in job opportunities (unless he's a very bad one maybe.. but even then)
I guess there has to be some balance though: there presumably are developers out there for whom job security is not guaranteed; or too great a risk (as TH Jones II reasonably suggests). But in that case I'm not sure I would consider an employer who engages in shady/illegal practices as a safe long-term bet and would still be looking to move on.
As for David - he clearly enjoys his privilege. I don't disagree that in the grand scheme of things this is a comparatively trivial example; but the question is: where do you draw the line?
Very very far from here. And don't think I missed the brush you're trying to paint me with by using the word 'privilege'. FFS, I'm a 48 year old liberal ... it's just that the world isn't as black and white (i.e. simple) as I used to think it was.
Gosh darn, now I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of shiat like this.
Sorry if I've offended; but let's be clear: most full-time employed developers are in a privileged position - myself most definitely included. IMO we should therefore take some responsibility for the world we are helping to create. If we're not willing to push back over something this 'trivial' then where does it end?
In Europe what this company did would be considered illegal. To me that's a clear line I won't cross. In fact that makes it an easy decision to make and an easy stand to take; however complex the world happens to be. Maybe it's not what you intended; but your response gave the distinct impression that your material comforts were well worth the price of breaking this 'trivial' law.
"but your response gave the distinct impression that your material comforts were well worth the price of breaking this 'trivial' law."
No, my point was it's not 'illegal' (loaded term) here and I already bitch about the cops (as a white guy and have for years), selfish policies (basically: 'conservative' ideals) and privacy (believe it or not) ... but I also know (my peers) don't know too much about GDPR and as soon as I mention it's a "Euro" thing 1/2 of them would tune me out (not sure I blame them) and the other 1/2 would probably roll their eyes
I do enjoy honest debates and I do not consider your privacy (or mine) trivial in any way whatsoever and I think the current state of affairs is disgusting (on both sides of the pond). To me, it seems like the problem I run into is that I have a very measured, pragmatic approach to things (it comes with age so they say) ... and don't think it's quite time for a lot of very important things (yet, sadly) so people think I'm arguing against an idea ... I'm usually not. People (rightfully) want to fix everything that broken right now .. and in my experience that's just not the way things work in the real world.
Let's fix the obvious problems with criminal law first. Not addressing this first (and by itself) is offensive to me and trivializes real suffering . You can have my freakin privacy if it'll keep people alive (which should be a false dichotomy in a free society) and out of jail (unless you are actually dangerous to society)
I guess we're looking at things from somewhat different cultural perspectives. The impression I have of the US is that things are really weighted against you: on face value it all looks so appealing - if you happen to be on the right side of the social divide. But if there really is no safety net and you fall on hard times you're essentially a slave to whatever system those with power have set up.
To put my original comment in context: I was able to give up both a toxic work environment and (IMO) a toxic country (the UK); move to another country with no contacts - and where I don't speak the language - and find gainful employment all in the space of 6 months. I appreciate that not everyone has that luxury; but that's precisely my point: those of us who do should use that leverage to effect meaningful change. So if an employer did put me in a position that went against my personal ethics (let alone the law) and resisted all my attempts to push back I really would have no hesitation to quit.
Heh, it's funny how much things change. When I lived 'abroad' in the late 80's and early 90's I was distressed to learn how much everyone else in the world seemed to be paying attention to everything we did and said (looking for a 'sign', it seemed) ... actually, a lot of the people who lived in the 'shiat hole' countries seemed to have the impression we were mere minutes from swooping in and saving them from something or another.
It was an unrealistically high opinion that was obviously going to to swing to the other extreme at some point (which it has) ...
Every place has good and bad parts my friend and I prefer being here ... or down in Australia. Not real fond of European culture .. it felt inscrutably "class" based (to an outsider at least) and I can't think of many things that bother me more (though I do enjoy hanging with Slavs ... )
Ideals are great and all, but, until there's a meaningful social safety-net that affords me the luxury of taking a stand any time an employer decides to do something shady, best many of us can do is go into active job-search mode and walk at the first opportunity.
Unfortunately, in the US, if you have any chronic health conditions (or responsible for someone who does), you're kind of constrained.
a.m.e.n.
I get sooooo tired of hearing "just quit" like that's even remotely possible these days (for 98.9% of us)
When I was still in my 20s, single with no mortgage or pets, it was doable. Now, with a wife with chronic health conditions, mortgage and pets, my ability to take a stand on principle requires a lot more deliberation.
At best, a given thing can make me decide, "time to shake my professional network to see who's hiring" or otherwise refresh my resume and jobsite-presences, but that's hair-trigger as I can currently be.
On the plus side of COVID-19 and its potential lasting-effects, I don't necessarily automatically have to give up my work-from-home just to take a new position.
Yo, what about GDPR or similar laws? In the Europe this is not legal.
When GDPR started, I was thinking, oh not another cookie notification, but then I realized that it is kinda cool to ask people if they actually want to give away they details, not just take them. It is civilized thing to do.
I am not so familiar with US laws about privacy and spam but as I remember they can't send you anything until you submit your email, right?
We should stop this next level black-hat data scraping/stealing shenanigans!
As a wise man once said:
Seriously, I think their place in dark patterns's hall of shame is well deserved 🙄
I recall a demo where a visitor while entering the 3rd 4th and 5th chr of their ZIP code (US), the corresponding address information would filter down then autofill the city and state fields.
The fields were asynchronous and could be tied to any data point. That was the point of the demo. The user never had to submit the data.
I'm speechless. This is very creepy. Gotta build a browser extension that monitors requests being made while filling forms (though now that I think of it, that may not be allowed).
Wish there was a legal way to handle this.
Maybe could be an extension that holds the value of every input, and fill them when de form is submited.
I'll tell you once I've started on this hopefully this weekend 🙂🍻
i dont get it. How would this monitor that the website is spying and making ajax requests?
I didn't research yet. My initial thoughts were either:
I'm not 100% sure we can do this, but we wanted to try out some ideas and see. Do you think these ideas won't work for technical reasons?
I get it now. The original answer wasn't as clear.
There will be some technical challenges to doing this, but I'd be interested in following your progress if you share a link to your repo (or better yet, a demo)!
That sounds wonderful! Thanks for your support. I will try and start the basic implementation, so we can have a look and consider our options or improve. I have only limited experience building Chrome extensions, but I'm sure if we put our heads together we can build a feasible solution somehow.
I was just browsing around, and thought this extension had some characteristics we could look into (monitoring request body etc). Need to check thoroughly.
chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/...
Hey, that's a clever idea! Thats very good. Will look into it. 😊👍🏻
Im considering the implications of handling autocomplete and input validations.
Great idea! Let me know if you need any help, would love to collaborate.
Thanks! Let's do it. I'll try and setup a Chrome extension codebase. Will try and start it this weekend. Will link it here. I'll add the base implementation and we can work together on it. Does that sound like a good plan?
I'm committed to a project until the end of June.
Will try to add as much as I can until then.
Please dm me so we can exchange contact info.
Reading the T&C at aeroflowbreastpumps.com/terms-and-..., it includes this line “By signing and submitting this form, I consent to receive phone calls, emails ...” which to me suggests you shouldn’t have received an email until you hit the submit button.
So it appears they’re in violation of their own T&C.
Exactly! I did not find anywhere on their site mentioning this behavior.
Very interesting post. The state of privacy seems to only be getting worse as companies are getting very desperate to squeeze more and more data out of each and everyone of us. Thank you for posting the behind the scene code to this.
This is horrible! Given how much people care about privacy, I am sure thousands of companies are doing this. Good that you shared this story with us. As @sebastian said, we should hope our dislikes are heard.
Substitute
developerswithsoldiersand think Nuremberg trialsThe exact same thing happened to me just a few days ago. Funny thing is, it didn't make me want to buy the product any more... just creeped me out. Great article, it was interesting to see how it works behind the scenes.
There's google tags manager that's 10 times creepier than this, It can log every interaction you have with html tags. Say you visited a shopping website and you hovered over an image of a particular product, this data gets recorded in the database.
There's an extension called NoScript that prevents running of scripts unless you white-flag it. This blocks all scripts from running, initially this will break many sites that you visit.You can then select from the extension which all necessary scripts needs to be run. NoScript then remembers this setting when you visit the website next time. NoScript is installed by default on the Tor browser. Here's a look at my setting for Dev in NoScript
dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/...
Link to extension for Firefox addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/a...
This is why we have GDPR in Europe... it prevents company's doing sneaky shit like this.
Had a similar experience a while ago. My partner and I were halfway through filling out some form on a banking website to get pre-approved for a home loan, but found a different place and abandoned the form and closed the tab. The next day we got notified that this company ran even the incomplete information we'd typed and we each had a new inquiry on our credit reports. We never hit submit or made any indication of consent at all. Really freaked me out, and I'm incredibly cautious about filling any forms out now.
Your real world example is basically what goes on at several chains of malls (Simon properties was a pioneer in this). There, though, they track the emanations from your cellphone. Lesson: either don't shop at such malls or, if you do, put your phone on airplane mode or in an empty potatochip bag.
Minority Report wasn't that far off on some things.
Well... I think in Germany you have a law that actually backs up "reserving and order". So my friend had an order from a company in Germany it might be even eBay Germany. After putting stuff in "cart" and then not doing anything, not ordering but also not clearing the "cart", he left the page, and after couple of days got some kind of fine which he had to pay because you apparently must clear the order in some time unless you actually want to buy....
Hope someone from Germany can see the comment to back it up with correct version of what is this law.
P.S. similar thing happened to me where I received email that I didn't finish my order (Swedish site). However this was saving my order in case my browser crashed or something and orders expire in like 24h or so. So basically they didn't ask me but it's a useful feature. They did however put in email something like "do you have problems with ordering? call us / email us /...". I did have an issue with order on another web shop and thought hmm it would be good if these guys had that tracker :D
It all depends on a type of marketing. Companies are allowed to send transactional marketing campaigns even if you are not subscribed to their newsletters. If you are a member of that product, you can't hide away from it.
Marketers often try to cross the boundaries by targeting their users with transactional campaigns, just to bring the user back to the site. By any means, I agree that this is a big concern and should be avoided by any means.
If this was done anywhere in the EU, we could bring the mighty GDPR hammer down on those fools.
This reads like a digital form of stalking and should be prosecuted.
Thank you for the heads up!
They don't even need to have an address in the EU themselves, if someone in Europe can use that site as intended, they're subject to GDPR.
IANAL but I'm pretty sure this is against GDPR as it's silently tracing your every move on this website.
I would think so too, but jurisdiction would be terrible to handle across the big pond. How and where would you even try to prosecute them?
It would be very interesting to get a lawyers opinion on this topic.
the answer would probably "in absentia" unless the defendant has compelling business interests in one (or more) of the EU countries. all they can do is ask them to come to court - this isn't criminal so there's not going to be an extradition.
Crazy, imagine all the sites that do similar stuff under the hood... Scary...
I shared this post on twitter as well as tagging them. I think publicly ask for modifications can be of effect. This is definitely not ok.
Does this mean what I think it means?
"I'm not accusing them if this is legal since this is way out of my realm and they probably have a legal team to back this kind of stuff but it's still not ok. It's not right." - It probably is.
I wonder if filling different emails before without submit could be illegal (We surely can't prosecute typos right?).
in the USA that's a civil law, not a criminal one and there's a huge difference between the two (and most of us don't understand this distinction)
So looking at this GDPR blog post they allow site admins to opt out of collecting PII and will work with existing cookie notification systems in order to respect customers choices, its a bit of a cop-out but they put the onus on the merchant to get consent and give them seemingly adequate tools to do so.
Checking the site mentioned as an EU customer with tracking protection and ad blocking turned off I see no GDPR notification and they are still making the request, so in this case it would be in violation of GDPR, however given that the form is for US customers enquiring about using health insurance to get a breast pump, its a bit of a moot point.
So looking at this GDPR blog post they allow site admins to opt out of collecting PII and will work with existing cookie notification systems in order to respect customers choices, its a bit of a cop-out but they put the onus on the merchant to get consent and give them seemingly adequate tools to do so.
Checking the site mentioned as an EU customer with tracking protection and ad blocking turned off I see no GDPR notification and they are still making the request, so in this case it would be in violation of GDPR, however given that the form is for US customers enquiring about using health insurance to get a breast pump, its a bit of a moot point.
yikes on bikes .
Let me scare you just a little more. I had same story with PayPal. Didn't click anywhere to pay on PayPal. But the payment has been processed anyway. (and the merchant recorded the order & everything)
Luckily PayPal agreed to refund... But well, it feels bad.
Note: this probably happened because I agree to pay in one click with PayPal. My problem is that... I didn't make ANY click (on paypal).
I had a PayPal issue in which I purchased an item through vendor A, who uses 3rd party transaction service B. A while later I made another purchase from vendor A, and my PayPal transaction went through without ever asking me for what funding source I wanted to use, and did not use my current default but used the source my first transaction had been through, with no confirmation step or anything. Not exactly the same but not cool.
That is scary. I was afraid to ever agree to pay in one click with PayPal.
This is a common pattern used in abandonend cart retargetting.
Abandoned cart usually uses cookies or user accounts, not scraping your email off half submitted forms
Timely but relevant: I noticed this week that the NAACP does this on their donation form:
And the email I received after abandoning:
How does everyone feel when the tactic is used in this scenario for an organization that relies on donations?
Wow, I keep on hearing more of these.
We need to adopt something like the GDPR here in the US.
I often see ads on Facebook and YouTube after having conversations about something, without googling/searching on the Internet. And that is much creepier than what experienced you. For example, recently I had a talk with a guy that just mentioned a company he's working in. Next days I see an ad on Facebook from that company. I didn't have any intention to search it at all. Such things repeat pretty often and noticed by many other people as well including my friends.
Both Google and Facebook say that they aren't eavesdropping us and this is a coincidence. I tend to believe them and can't explain why that's happening again and again.
Yes, I've heard about frequency illusion (Baader–Meinhof phenomenon), but still creepy.
Not cool and if you see what's possible with apps like Shopify it's even worse, you can see who abandonned their cart and there is built-in (and optional) apps to automatically send a mail to them every X days / minutes for X days.
"If your going to take my email address then at least let me know before I type anything."...my thoughts exactly. This is very unsettling to know that thing type of thing is happening. It should be illegal.
I've definitely worked with agencies who do this in the past, even way back as far as ten years ago.
Some went as far as recording what you typed, so they could play it back and watch you change your mind. Watch you backspace over your original "screw you" comment and replace it with something polite. While that's fine for things like focus groups, who know they're in a test environment, for real people it should be right off the cards.
You closed the page without submitting. Where's the consent? There isn't any.
Yes, it's not very ethical in terms of what it does. But, I have come across a few places too where they have done this during the checkout step. Especially when the checkout is split into different steps.
Such a great read guys!!!
I find these practices to come from humble beginnings at first, but then they lead on to more creepy practices as the need for more data/insights are required to drive more revenue.
I'm in meetings all the time as a dev on how to drive more engagement, which in turn is what drives conversion.
We want to know as much as possible about our customers to better match and recommend things they care about.
But there is a fundamental line one as developers we should not cross. When we develop systems that circumvents consent.
I'm not surprised we haven't made a developers oath process that we all subscribe and unionize too. Or something more simple like the Agile manifesto, where we all sign into and ensure that any agent or company must acknowledge that we are ethical Devs.
People power will always win.
One site who practices this is Shaw Academy. The same tactic, even if you abandon the form in the part where they ask for your credit card, you get spammed with texts/emails everyday. You can't cancel on their site and have to call them to cancel/delete your account.
I try to use a different email (alias) per website so I can know who's selling my data and disable the email alias right away. Unfortunately a lot of websites don't respect GDPR so in the meantime, it's better to protect ourselves.
This happened to me once with a form to get a moving quote. I put in my phone number but did not hit submit. The next day they started calling me and thankfully they stopped when I told them I'd report them for violating spam laws. Like you, I'm not sure if it's technically illegal, but it's definitely shady and just not cool.
How would a dev implement such a thing? I would quit my job right away if my boss said this is what I have to implement.
By the way congrats! :)
Thank you!
Basically that's what a Data Broker does. I've read about them in Hannah Fry's book "Hello World: How to be human in the age of the machine". GDPR and similar laws have born to limit those actions. I'm not quite familiar with US regulations, but that's creepy AF
Or, you know, we could stop pretending it's not going to get worse and make our own GDPR. I'd like to treat privacy like the 1st amendment (i.e. you cannot sign it away, period).
Damn. It's flagrantly! Thanks for sharing.
A great concept but not sure if it is safe to implement
Thank you!!
The worst thing is..... anyone can trigger sending emails to any email address despite they own it or not.
Also, If they do not have a captcha in the form, their email provider will be banned soon.
Wow this sounds like a nightmare I would have on those rough nights.
I feel like the web is the only place where paranoia would not actually hurt.
Thanks for sharing this! Crazy.
That's definitely not ok!!
Well, in Europe given the GDPR, this company will have problems with this business model as a user must consent before his/hers data is used.
I can spam my enemies with this! Woohoo!
Thisbis a well known marketing strategy, but they jave tincollect only the information relevant for this to work, and collecting any personal information requieres consent.
Hence, report them.
You're right, this doesn't sit well. Good ethics that support trustworthiness should never be lost in salesmanship.
Congrats on the new family member.
Thank you!
Woof, that's happened on the rare occasion with shopping carts for me and I would think about how and why 😩
Great post. Thanks for sharing this.
Jail time, my friends.
That is the default behavior of every Shopify website