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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

#91
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're all online anyway, wouldn't you already know how to reach those people?

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

#92

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…

Last time this was discussed, someone said that hotels get a generated CC from Booking, valid only for that transaction. Hope it's true :)

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

#93
post #32

I mean - after Equifax got away with leaking SSNs, Names, Addresses with DoBs of all 142M Americans - this is seriously nothing. At this point, I have become apathetic on these privacy related issues as nothing will be done.

All 142m Americans?

Yes: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-equifax-breach/equifax-fa...

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

#94

Nothing will happen until a malicious party ends up cancelling an entire flight’s worth of passengers and it starts costing them serious money and reputation. It’s a sad state of affairs when there is no ethical way to correct certain grossly unethical business practices.

> malicious party

Which one? Google, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Crazy Egg, Criteo or NSA listening on the wire?

My apologies if you disagree, but I feel that the article is borderline alarmist and I believe is written in the worst possible tone to communicate the problem.

Yup, there is a shitton of analytics products. Yes, PII is leaked and this needs to be fixed. But, no, it's not like listed parties (BTW, of which ek.aero is Emirates' own domain) are immediate threats. However, yes, this is quite severe as there are many scenarios when the data would eventually land in the wrong hands. E.g. if it would not considered sensitive PII anymore but treated as "just some analytics/statistics".

Basically, he should have patiently communicated that despite the trust in big analytic companies, private personal information still gets sent to them (mostly indirectly - in form of session links), and this may lead to accidental security leaks. Like, for example, some subcontractor having access to "only" analytics would technically have access to much more data than they are expected to have.

The article fails to do this and instead screams what's essentially boils down to "Google Analytics sees a link to the page with my passport details!". Color me surprised the support reply was not helpful at all.

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

#95
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…

Well, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will become enforceable in May (for all people in the EU).

As far as I understand, Emirates is risking big fines if they they don't fix this by May 25.

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

#96
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're all online anyway, wouldn't you already know how to reach those people?

That's IF you all pay extra for in-flight WiFi, and assuming the plane's network link is working. (Many planes' WiFi use a cellular-based network link that has occasional dead spots. Satellite linking is only available on newer planes.)

Whereas seat-to-seat chat is free and relatively reliable.

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

#97

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

I use it frequently both to talk to folks in my party who got seated elsewhere, other friends who are coincidentally on the same flight (common when traveling for conventions/conferences).

I also know folks who have arranged large group bookings (30+ passengers going to the same event) and found it useful to talk to each other.

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

#98
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.

Proper first-line support setup makes the staff send any queries they don't understand to higher levels, not throw away.

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

#99

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.

As much as I agree with you that we seriously have got to stop trotting out that quote all the time, the quote doesn't necessarily preclude what you point out. According to the quote, if you don't pay for it, you're definitely the product, but clearly, as you mention, just because you pay for it doesn't mean you're still not the product. Unfortunately.

That quote is a lazy-soudbite-argument that "you shouldn't use free services" (because "you're the product" and that's "obviously" bad). However, if you stop to think about it for a second, you'll realize that it's dead wrong. It sounds nice & all, but it is in fact meaningless, and probably misguiding.

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

#100

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.

=< 100
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