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How Airlines don’t care about privacy: Case Study Emirates.com

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Re: How Airlines don’t care about privacy: Case Study Emirates.com

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm waiting for someone to state "when you're not paying for something, you are the product", except in this case, you are paying for something, yet you're still the product. This is just...disgusting.

This is why we should stop quoting that all the time. Just because you are paying for a product does not prevent your data from being sold or used in unethical ways.

The quote is not wrong. If you aren't paying for something, then 100% of the time you are the product. If you are paying for something, then <100% of the time you are also the product.

Re: How Airlines don’t care about privacy: Case Study Emirates.com

#82
post #79

This should not be a surpise. Most business types don't give a shit about anything but money. Community, social, environment, or any other negative externaliaities. They just don't care. They're after and bound to "feduciary" responsiblity. (Short term reward and ignoring long term consequences) I realize that was a moral high horse: I'm curious about how you can reward people for positive long term growth.

It turns out that people in general buy airline tickets based almost exclusively on price. Airlines are actually showing very long term thinking given that they have very high capital costs and need to make those investments pay off in the very long run. People are rewarded in the long term with profit because they have built a business that their customers want to patronize.

Even as a very technically savvy person I am not sure I would stop flying an airline because of this. While I agree these are awful practices would I be willing to do an extra hop with an airline that had better security? Nope. So while I sympathize with the article if Emirates was my main airline I would probably still fly them. It turns out many companies suck at securing their customers data. If that is important to their customers they will be reward/punished accordingly.

Ironically this is one of the reasons I prefer to buy things online through Amazon and why I think they have 50% market share. They are a trusted counterparty to my transactions and I would rather buy something through them than a small companies website.

Re: How Airlines don’t care about privacy: Case Study Emirates.com

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like KLM: https://www.klm.com/travel/us_en/prepare_for_travel/on_board... This is on a strictly opt-in basis. I guess it's an interesting alternative to Tinder if you're going to be stuck on a plane. (Disclaimer: I've never tried it myself)

Apparently on Virgin Airlines there are chat rooms on the planes. Those have only two practical use cases: dating, and trolling: https://twitter.com/KrangTNelson/status/959907806622121984

One practical use is talking to people you're on a flight with but not say next to. I can't say I'd be a regular user of that feature, but I do find myself on flights like that from time to time.

Re: How Airlines don’t care about privacy: Case Study Emirates.com

#84
That's pretty bad, but frankly he could have communicated better to Emirates. If I was working as first line support and received that message with "omg do you know you are sharing fields a, b and c to partners. And maybe you are sharing with x, y and z also?", without any technical details at all, I would also give a canned response, tag it as tinfoil hat and throw it into the junk.

Re: How Airlines don’t care about privacy: Case Study Emirates.com

#85
post #84

That's pretty bad, but frankly he could have communicated better to Emirates. If I was working as first line support and received that message with "omg do you know you are sharing fields a, b and c to partners. And maybe you are sharing with x, y and z also?" , without any technical details at all, I would also give a canned response, tag it as tinfoil hat and throw it into the junk.

Exactly. Twitter isn't the medium to report this sort of problem. Ask for an email address for security vulnerabilities, and send it there.

Re: How Airlines don’t care about privacy: Case Study Emirates.com

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we should stop quoting that all the time. Just because you are paying for a product does not prevent your data from being sold or used in unethical ways.

The quote is not wrong. If you aren't paying for something, then 100% of the time you are the product. If you are paying for something, then <100% of the time you are also the product.

I don't pay for wikipedia (actually I do via donations and edits but that's not the point) but I don't see anything bad about their BM.

Re: How Airlines don’t care about privacy: Case Study Emirates.com

#87
post #84

That's pretty bad, but frankly he could have communicated better to Emirates. If I was working as first line support and received that message with "omg do you know you are sharing fields a, b and c to partners. And maybe you are sharing with x, y and z also?" , without any technical details at all, I would also give a canned response, tag it as tinfoil hat and throw it into the junk.

Exactly. Twitter isn't the medium to report this sort of problem. Ask for an email address for security vulnerabilities, and send it there.

Well: «Please note that I could not find a dedicated channel for reporting security bugs on Emirates website.»

Re: How Airlines don’t care about privacy: Case Study Emirates.com

#88
post #13

I oftentimes reach for my 'call the regulator' button when I read these articles. Whats odd is how many people say "god no..." as if there was some consequential downside to using the very government entity we created (in law) to make corporate entities "do the right thing" when they don't appear to want to do it voluntarily. So.. here we go. Explain to me, why we don't want to enact law to require (through regulatio…

I oftentimes reach for my 'call the regulator' button when I read these articles. And what regulator is that? Does Dubai even have a "regulator" overseeing stuff like this? Emirates is wholly owned by the government of Dubai. So basically you would be complaining about one Dubai government agency to another Dubai government agency. Perhaps you could complain about this to some US or EU regulator? Would they care enou…

I live in Portugal, an EU country. After a complaint, our National Data Protection Commission fined one of my neighbors for having posted certain personal data of other tenants on our building hall.

They care.

Re: How Airlines don’t care about privacy: Case Study Emirates.com

#89
post #84

That's pretty bad, but frankly he could have communicated better to Emirates. If I was working as first line support and received that message with "omg do you know you are sharing fields a, b and c to partners. And maybe you are sharing with x, y and z also?" , without any technical details at all, I would also give a canned response, tag it as tinfoil hat and throw it into the junk.

He does address that though:

>Please note that I could not find a dedicated channel for reporting security bugs on Emirates website

I agree that he should've found an email channel but Twitter is their official customer support interaction.

Re: How Airlines don’t care about privacy: Case Study Emirates.com

#90

From my experience the travel industry are the worst offenders of data security. I remember making booking on booking.com and not having to pay for my booking, and I wondered how hotels can confirm bookings, when I went to check in at the hotel I asked this question to the front desk staff, and they simply told me “oh we get a fax or email from the OTA of your credit card information”. You can imagine the look on my…

watch this: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7964-where_in_the_world_is_carme... its really bad apparently
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