I looked at the new privacy policy and here's what I found

GothicGremlin

I went over both the AA privacy policy as well as the Vanilla Logic policy.

They're similar.

The Good

Both policies are fairly readable. There's a certain amount of jargon but for the most part, both entities explain the jargon they use. They both are fairly transparent in their disclosures.

Under the Do Not Track discussion, the AA policy references the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) website discussion of how people are tracked and some ways to combat that tracking. A great way to stop a lot of tracking is by using ad blockers, like uBlock, and apps like EFF's Privacy Badger. Very helpful. For the record, I use ad blockers and NoScript (I avoid all of Google's trackers that way). I also use Privacy Badger and in the past I've used Ghostery (time to retest that one).

Note: If you're in the EU, you have more privacy rights because of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). There's a good discussion of it in the AA privacy policy.

Note: If you're in California you have extra privacy rights thanks to the "Shine the Light" and California Online Privacy Protection Act. Funny that they don't reference the California Consumer Privacy Act. It's a relatively new law and has some good protections.

The Bad

Pretty much any information that can be collected will be collected.

If you interact with AA via phone or email, your phone number and email address will be collected (as one would expect).

Internet activity is collected. They use web beacons (I always refer to them as web bugs much to the annoyance of the marketers I know) to track which pages you go to, and what you are looking at on that page. Get rid of these trackers by using something like Privacy Badger.

Geolocation information is collected. This is your physical location or movements. They use google maps, so if you use that, google will get your information and so will AA.

They may also collect sensory information which they describe as voice and/or video recordings. I guess they'd get this data from phone calls or video calls?

They may also collect financial information (that they get from checks you write), and employment information (if your email address is your work address).

So, nothing sinister, but just a lot of information that can be collected to create a very detailed picture of you.

The Ugly

De-identified data may be collected and shared with third parties for any purpose.

AA explains that de-identified data is not the same thing as personal data. This is under the theory that de-identified data cannot be attributable back to a specific person "by reasonable means". Not stated in the policy is that this data often can be traced back to a specific person. There are research papers out there that demonstrate this. And note that data brokers are going to use whatever means they have at their disposal to figure out who you are.

AA also allows third-Party Behavioral Tracking. "We allow third-party behavioral tracking of Personal Data, though we may use De-Identified Personal Data to track users’ click or browsing patterns."

Under their "required disclosures" section AA states that data may be shared with:

Advertising partners, including social media providers, for the delivery of targeted advertisements

Unrelated third-party list renters for one-time mail or email approved by us; and/or

Marketing providers who may sell mailing lists

There are more reasons why they'd share data, but these are the ones that jumped out at me.

Data collection under "support information" - support requests from users. It's a lengthy list, but here are the ones that jump out:

Data suppliers (e.g., companies that provide demographics and other information regarding consumers). These would be data brokers, says GG.

Joint marketing partners

Online advertising companies

Social media companies

Under information they collect automatically -

Log files, things like IP addresses (they get a vague notion of where you are located), third party cookies and other tracking devices (like the beacons).

So that's what I see - I tried to stay out of the weeds. I hope this is helpful.

Iris L.

Everything you mention above, I have no understanding of. I just do NOT want my email address and name on my profile for the whole world to see. Is that doable? My profile is now private, so no one can know my story. I am not going to tell my story in every post for the newcomers.

Ed1937

It's all I can see is Iris L. Nothing more.

Iris L.

I have become invisible.😒

Another Day

Would using a VPN help?

eaglemom

Another Day - I will show my utter lack of computer savvy. What is VPN? (I'll probably be embarrassed, oh well.)

eagle

M1

It's a virtual private network EM. added security, a lot of workplaces now require them to work from home. Don't be embarrassed. But I don't think it would help--the issue here is that some of us like to have parts of our situations available to other readers but not necessarily everything. The very fact that email addresses could be displayed at all==by choice or not---is disturbing here, it could be inadvertently set to be public (as mine apparently was when I first logged on) and that is an open door for scammers. Default should be that it is not available, to my mind shouldn't even be a choice in the settings.

GothicGremlin

A VPN would help somewhat with masking your physical location because it uses the VPN IP address instead of yours.

eaglemom

Thank you for explaining that to me. I had no idea.

eagle

Another Day

It's so hard to keep up with the various conversations with the new format....eaglemom - Son in law explained it to me.... I figured out how to set it up using ProtonMail.com

Funny thing, but in the same time frame of the change over from old format to this new one I began getting advertisements, actually being solicited for donations, through my email account from Alzheimer's Association. I had to unsubscribe to get them to stop. Has anyone else had this to happen?

GothicGremlin

After getting zero solicitations for five years, beginning on April 4 I've received ten solicitations, several of them marked as URGENT. Coincidence? I think not.

Quilting brings calm

I started getting solicitations too. It’s as if they took the alzconnected member list to the revamped site, and turned on the receive solicitations choice. I unsubscribed.

Iris L.

I think that under Terms and Agreements, when we re-signed up, we had to agree to accept emails, which include solicitations.

M1

It hasn't happened to me yet. Must be some setting thing. I'm sure most of it is robotic but irritating nonetheless. Will backfire big time i imagine.

Joydean

I am getting from 2-3 solicitation a day! Some say urgent and others say because you are a member of Alzconnected we need your support! It’s very frustrating.

GothicGremlin

You and me both, Joydean.

The one I got today says "we have a special gift for you."

Testing to see if my favorite emoji comes through -- 😒 (it's 'unamused')

M1

Guys have you checked all settings carefully? I haven't gotten a single email. It's gotta be a setting thing. Maybe add that to the list on the Q&A thread? Would be interesting to see the answer.

GothicGremlin

I don't know. I thought I'd locked it down.... maybe I haven't done as good a job as I thought I had.

Another Day

I started getting multiple solicitations per day when the "new" site was being brought up and running. I had to unsubscribe to get them to stop.