Thursday, September 08, 2005

Free VoIP service harvests your contacts

A new VoIP service called adcalls allows users to make free calls over the internet. It appears to be supported by advertising, but Engadget points out that the end user license agreement suggests that the company will harvest the numbers you call in order to market to them.

From the adcalls "Privacy Policy":

"AdCalls Inc/AdCalls.com Inc. (hereinafter referred to as "AdCalls") acknowledges the importance of protecting the privacy of personal information provided by our users, and is deeply committed to privacy protection. ...

Third Party Information. If you originate a telephone call or send an email message to a third party, you give us the third party's contact information, such as email address. We complete the call and retain that person's information to contact them later to solicit them to join our AdCalls service or for other purposes. AdCalls has a program where we solicit the names and addresses of people who may be interested in our services. We use the information received under that program to send potential users email invitations to join our service....

All I can say is read the fine print (and only use it to call people you don't like).

See: Get free VoIP calling from AdCalls, lose all your friends - Engadget - www.engadget.com

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