Birther Report violates its own privacy policy

I mentioned in comments recently that I had added a privacy policy to this site. One of the reasons for doing so is a requirement from Google that sites using their Analytics offering provide a privacy policy disclosing that Analytics is being used.

I dropped by Birther Report just now to see if they have a privacy policy policy and they do. Here’s what it says under the section “What do we use your information for?”:

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:
; To personalize your experience (your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs)
; To improve our website (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you)

In a later section, they talk about disclosure to third parties:

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

With that background, consider this published item at BR (image courtesy of The Fogbow):

What you’re looking at is an IP address and an email address (both comprise personal identification) of a commenter at Birther Report posting as AlabasterDoll, a sock puppet of Bill Bryan (aka Foggy) that had been posting at BR for several weeks. Birther Report provided this information to the commenter Falcon, who then published it. That appears to be a clear violation of their privacy policy.

Falcon’s own remark is odd: “By the way – I think I accidentally vacuumed up all the emails in this address. So sorry. I’d hate for those to get out.” Of course, there is no way to accidentally access someone’s emails.

Foggy then said that he had reported Falcon to the FBI for hacking his emails (read the exchange at The Fogbow), but then Falcon denied that he had read Foggy’s emails. Looks like Falcon was playing chicken and flinched first.

I trust that this violation of its privacy policy by Birther Report is a one-time aberration that that they will begin to adhere to their policy or change it.