Unroll.me is one of the most effective services on the Internet that help you filter out spam from your email. It helps list out all the websites you have subscribed to, letting you unsubscribe them in one go. But, things aren’t seeming all that rosy for Unroll.me right now.
Unroll.me selling user data to advertisers
Serious allegations have gone public, about the website, which claims that it is selling all that user data to advertisers. Users need to give access to their email details for the service to work, and that is what Unroll is selling out in the public to make those big bucks. The company’s CEO, Jojo Hedaya, said that their users were the heart of the company and that it was heartbreaking to see that some of them were upset to learn about this new development.
He further went on to admit to this mistake, “And while we try our best to be open about our business model, recent customer feedback tells me we weren’t explicit enough”. It is believed that this shady business started when the website was bought over by shopping app Slice in 2014. The data Slice sells is anonymised, thankfully, but it weirdly also covers Uber and Lyft ride receipts.
This change in management is what prompted Unroll to monetize in an ironic manner, doing what they help users eliminate, i.e, spam.
“I can’t stress enough the importance of your privacy. We never, ever release personal data about you. All data is completely anonymous and related to purchases only. Thank you for being such an important part of our company. If there’s more we can be doing better, please let me know”. concluded the CEO in a letter to the website visitors.
The CEO also mentioned that while Unroll.me had a Terms of Service Agreement and a plain-English Privacy Policy, most of the users/visitors and even the company management (shocking) haven’t really gone through it well enough to be acquainted with all the little ambiguous terms. To rectify all these grave mistakes, Hedaya promised to introduce a more transparent way to provide information to the users.
