Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten has caused outrage after being exposed as selling customer personal information, including names, email addresses and home addresses, to all comers for a trifling ¥10 each.
Rakuten is one of Japan’s largest online retailers, and its largest online mall (Rakuten Ichiba), with annual revenues of some $2.7 billion, and primarily does business as a shopping portal, with individual shops paying fees and commissions to be listed and have access to the company’s ecommerce platform.
The company offers its participating shops the opportunity to buy the personal data of customers (as CSV files) using a handy online form, though without email addresses included.
However, for shops with revenues or orders over a modest amount, simply submitting a form and getting past their “inspection” procedure is enough to get the full addresses. They even offer to “discuss” orders from shops not meeting these criteria.
Since anyone can open a shop with them, and what happens to the data once it is sold is anyone’s guess, it does not appear there are any serious safeguards in place, and indeed this is demonstrated by experiments and anecdotes.
Tests using email addresses created exclusively for the purpose of ordering from them (using Gmail and similar) reveal that the addresses are quickly subjected to a steady torrent of spam entirely unconnected to Rakuten (which is in Japanese and disturbingly sometimes carries the full name of the customer, and so is likely not automatically generated), demonstrating that the problem is far from theoretical.
The wholesale hawking of customer data is likely legal (and presumably “consented” to at some point by the customer), and has been going on for a number of years, though of course no customer would expect this sort of outrageously unethical behaviour from a major Japanese brand.
The actual revenues from these sales are not clear, but with at least 50 million registered users by their own admission, it seems likely to be significant enough to justify the practice in the eyes of an unscrupulous management.
As anyone who has shopped with Rakuten can likely attest, although the prices can be amongst some of the lowest available, the merchants themselves are quite variable in quality, and notably any email address used to order with them is highly likely to be bombarded with spam from both Rakuten and the individual sellers, leaving aside the issue of personal details being sold.
Via Gigazine.
Privacy conscious Japan is unlikely to quickly forgive this, and anything less than an immediate and groveling apology (coupled with a halt to the practice) seems likely to permanently damage the company’s brand, especially considering the mass media is likely to excoriate them for the practice.
Whilst few would care what happens to the company after such a scandal, it does seem possible it will damage overall confidence in online retailers in Japan, and this may be the most damaging effect of the scandal, saving the matter of furnishing spammers with millions of addresses of course…
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Hey Artefact, you have at least AN email from each of us right? This sounds increasingly like a viable source for you to get quick cash.
Doing such a thing is unthinkable; shame on you for suggesting it.
*big thumbs up for mods*
Yeah, you'd probably only make like $100 anyways, since all anonymous don't give you emails. Total waste of time, am I right?
Here in Russia, you can easily get a database of all the names, adresses, phone numbers, car owners with plate numbers, and more just like that. This is illegal of corse, but nobody gives a shit about it.
In Soviet Russia, spammers pwn YOU!!!
DAMN ALL SPAM AND ALL WHO GIVE THEM..
DAMN THEM ALL TO HELLLLLLL
Feminists never protest against these kind of insane merchants.
What they target is always innocent eroge and mangas.
what a shame!
the world is still emphasizing women's rights!!
the fact is, there is NO RIGHTS LEFT FOR MEN!!!
The amusing part is that information such as this usually costs somewhere in the ranks of thousands of Dollars. Risking one's reputation a clientele is surely not a wise approach, considering the pay.
this is just plain outrageous.
all that i feel has been said in the article itself, but one word i must say myself: OUTRAGEOUS.
I know right? Ugh that totally sucks!
Incredibly stupid. It doesn't take long for multiple networks to begin flooding once one of them has a small bit of information. Though admittedly, this site undergoes a similar process with its articles. But the difference is between private and public information. It's too invasive.
Lol
Lol
First comment always fails
lol
C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker
lol
is hard be "first" ,right? xD
First is serious biz. Learn it.
Sounds like a legit comment. All I can say is "lol" to this article.
u make it looks like a game or competition to be the fucking 1st post... anyway, fucking congratulation xD
Endo - Indeed.
Also only one year ago, there wasn't this FIRST GET faggotry... And so many anons. Popularity brings down the quality. That happened to the 4chan, and I hope this awesome site will not gone the way of it.
LONG LIVE THE SANKAKU!
Considering I read though the whole thing before I posted, and I am not a fast reader, "being first" had nothing to do with the brief response.
Lol is all that was needed to sum up my feelings on this article.
Could have been WoW, Haha, that sucks, WTH, WTF, lol Japan, LOL internet, Lolz, lulz, laff, etc.
Not exactly a shocking article considering this is far from an uncommon practice. It is just funny.
I went with Lol
Oh dear, you forgot roflcopter.
Lol.
Lmao.
Rofl.
Roflmao.
Roflol.
Omg.
Gtfo.
...good job?
Omg, I did.
lol....
Lol
I have learned, if commenting about something is unnecessary or if ninety others already said the same, I should have no good reason to as well.
indeed
HA!
Well put, Kip, well put.
The problem is how this can be avoided in the future. We can all be certain that if they weren't caught doing the act they wouldn't have stopped. So measures must be taken into account in order to avoid things such as this from happening.
BTW, does the company have sort of a license agreement/terms of service when registering? If a clause is included there that states that all your private information will be protected, then everyone whose information was sold can sue the company.
https://privacy.rakuten.co.jp/
https://www.rakuten.co.jp/myrakuten/rule/
Can anybody translate the privacy one?
"By agreeing to the above stated terms, you will allow Rakuten and all of its associates access to your personal information to sale for personal profits."
Hahaha no, didn't read it. But it probably says that.
Well if it did then i guess we can't blame Rakuten and instead blame the laziness of the people subscribing in reading the Privacy Policy.
I've bought numerous things from Rakuten Download but never gotten any spam to the address I used. Dunno what that means.
This is... ugh, don't they have anything like the Data Protection Act we have over here?
I wouldn't be surprised if companies like Google are doing things like this behind our backs.
Nope. Not behind your backs, it's all in their privacy policy.
That would be pretty funny, especially considering that they then stop the spam before it gets to us. LOL
Hahaha, that's horrible. Imagine of something like eBay pulls that off. I wouldn't want spam saying "GET YOUR VIAGRA FOR $0.99 @ [WWW.DRUGS4CHEAP.COM]http://WWW.DRUGS4CHEAP.COM" or something, addressed directly at me with my name = ="... though I do get spam. Spam targeted at me personally would be... quite disturbing, so to speak.
The company ought to change their policy about the sales or the release of personal information in general, to a third party. If not, people should boycott them. That would show them to respect their customers.
Oh, and don't click on that link. I have no idea where that would lead you. Internet user discretion is advised. As well as common logic.