Unroll.me cofounder’s rant reminds us to be wary of free services

Today, Perri Chase, a founder of Unroll.me who is no longer affiliated with the company, published a Medium post defending her co-founder and current CEO of the company, Jojo Hedaya after their company was found to be selling user data to Uber. In her post, Chase ineloquently explains that data collection shouldn’t shock users, and if it does, then “you have clearly been living under a rock.”

“Believe me we came up with this product to rid your inbox of unwanted emails, AND the reason it is used by millions of people for FREE is because we figured out how to monetize it,” she writes (emphasis hers).

While the post came off as insensitive and elitist, Chase has a point. Nothing is free online because you are paying for it in the form of your data, which can be sold to third-party advertisers and / or used to target you with ads. It’s a business practice that many internet users don’t fully understand, as we saw with the backlash toward Unroll.me this week. Those who lashed out at Unroll.me did so on Twitter, another free service that uses your data to target advertisements from third parties. Others, including Chase, use Gmail as an example to defend Unroll.me.

“Data is pretty much the only business model for email and Unroll.me is not the only company that looks at, collects, and sells your data,” she writes. “What exactly do you think is going on in your FREE Gmail inbox?” (Again, emphasis is her own.)

It’s important to understand, however, that the way startups like Slice (which owns Unroll.me) and the giants of Google and Facebook treat your data is extremely different. Google and Facebook analyze information about you gathered through your email, social networking habits, demographics, and location, and use that data to entice third-party companies to advertise with them. In other words, the information they have on you allows them to sell access to your eyeballs for targeted ads in your news feed or sponsored search results.

Startups like Slice, on the other hand, collect information about you and other users and sells it to outside firms. Once it’s handed off, the client can do what it wants with the data. In both cases, however, data is sold in the aggregate, meaning you personally aren’t identified. Although admittedly, compiling a report specifically for Uber feels a little icky in light of recent negative press.

Still, this is the reality of most “free” services — a practice most people are unaware of, which provides data collecting services with ample room to take advantage. Could Unroll.me do a better job of being more clear and transparent with users? Absolutely. As Fusion / Gizmodo’s Kashmir Hill outlined, Unroll.me’s UI appears intentionally designed to trick users into agreeing to sell their data.

More than anything else, Hedaya’s apology and Chase’s blog post emphasize that you should be reading privacy polices if data collection concerns you. As an aside, you should also only be enabling and using services you trust. The question now is if you’re uncomfortable with data brokerage, what services will you use considering that most every company is guilty? Would you be willing to pay for a Gmail account?