Spam complaint

[ku71]

I received an announcement today for the new version. Several actually. Once is an address not really used for e-mail & from the way it was used it I conclude was harvested by a piece of dumb software.

I find this practice extremely disgusting. On top of that, the mail has a web bug so it can track if a user received the message and if the mail address is valid. I complained about this before and was told it was fixed.

Sage TV is "privacy sensitive" software. It collects usage patterns, personally identifyabe records etc, in other words potentially valuable information. I find it harder and harder to trust Frey technologies with that information

[dkardatzke]

Martin,

Please unsubscribe from the mailing list if you no longer wish to receive e-mails from us about new version, discounts, etc. If you received multiple e-mails at the same address please send me an e-mail to info@freytechnologies.com with your e-mail address and how many messages you received and I'll look into the problem.

Thanks,
Dan

[insomniac]

Unplug for a while..

Originally posted by ku71
I received an announcement today for the new version. Several actually. Once is an address not really used for e-mail & from the way it was used it I conclude was harvested by a piece of dumb software.

I find this practice extremely disgusting. On top of that, the mail has a web bug so it can track if a user received the message and if the mail address is valid. I complained about this before and was told it was fixed.

Sage TV is "privacy sensitive" software. It collects usage patterns, personally identifyabe records etc, in other words potentially valuable information. I find it harder and harder to trust Frey technologies with that information

[falchulk]

So sage tv sends info back to frey? Does the apop ever make any kind of a connection other then to download listings?

[Narflex]

I have no idea what information you're referring to ku71. We don't collect any personal information about usage patterns.

The 'web bug' thing in the emails is because of some Microsoft issue. They say its not in there. Dan even showed me the email from them. But as you see, it obviously is in there. We're looking into using a different mailing list service at this time which doesn't have 'web bugs'.

I can also assure you that we ONLY collect email addresses if you submit it on our website, or if you send us an email from that address. This is stated in our privacy policy.

Without getting political here, I have some pretty strong opinions about an individual's right to privacy, and I do my best to retain those values for our company. If you feel we're violating your privacy in any way, please let me know so I can address the situation immediately.

[justme]

I got the same email you are talking about. But I don't consider it SPAM. I signed up for just this type of notification. ie new versions, sales, etc...

As for email harvesting... The account that recieved the email was the public account at yahoo that I use to help protect my privacy. I only recieved one copy. I have actually contacted Frey(both Jeff and Dan) from two of my private email accounts. Neither of those has ever recieved any email other than a response to my questions. If they were truely harvesting email I would think I would have gotten the notification of a new version in these two private accounts as well. I did not.

falchulk ask:

So sage tv sends info back to frey? Does the apop ever make any kind of a connection other then to download listings?

Don't worry there are many users of SageTV that have a lot of experience with spying sofware. None of them have ever found any indication of anything supsicious in Frey's software.

My Tivo collects information about me all the time. I was notified of this but can do little, since I bought a lifetime subscription before they started collecting the data. The only way out would be to right off my $450 investment.

Frey does nothing like the Tivo does. If they planned on making money this way then they wouldn't have made it so easy to add an external EPG provider like XMLTV. So no need to worry, falchulk.

I highly value my privacy, so I can somewhat understand Ku71's concern. All I can say to anyone else who reads this thread is that Frey is an excellant company with reguards to privacy. They have never violated my privacy. I literally trust them like family and they are only one of two online places I can say this of. The other is SHS's forum.

2 cents from a long time Frey customer.

[ku71]

Well, I got three mails, one to my work address which I used exactly once in an e-mail response.

Narflex: I cannot imagine intelligent recording to work any other way as by analyzing my previous usage pattern. My SageTV License Key identifies me as a user.

Note I did not claim this information was transmitted to frey technologies. I just find it hard to trust a company which engages in practices usually associated with spammers.

Martin

[rrussell]

Martin, er, not to be insensitive, but if you don't want Sage to collect your usage patterns, don't turn on intelligent recording - right? I mean, it needs that info to do its JOB, man... at least until microsoft comes out with the WinESP dll.

And you kinda sorta need a license key to run the prog.

If none of this stuff ever leaves your PC, I don't understand the issue.

And for the record, even though my spam filter does treat the Frey emails as spam, I still recognize that I signed up for 'em when I bought the prog.

[insomniac]

maybe we shouldnt waste anymore time on this guys issues?...

[pawn]

Narflex: I cannot imagine intelligent recording to work any other way as by analyzing my previous usage pattern. My SageTV License Key identifies me as a user.

That's YOU harvesting information about YOURSELF. What a strange claim.


Note I did not claim this information was transmitted to frey technologies.


You all but said it.


I just find it hard to trust a company which engages in practices usually associated with spammers.


You've obviously been around long enough to know the way these guys have treated their customers. Why would their view towards spamming be any different?

I'd bet a lot that you didn't even read the sign up form for this forum.