What's extremely unethical is contacting the person over LinkedIn. It's extremely aggressive and a huge violation of boundaries, and proves that Microsoft is sharing personal information (names of users) with Canonical.
If I buy something online from a store, I would expect a few spam emails. But it would be completely unacceptable if a sales representative showed up at my house (despite me only sharing my address for billing/shipping purposes). This is basically what happened to the Azure customer.
I have no idea what you're talking about regarding "huge violation of boundaries", because there are none on LinkedIn. I get multiple DMs a week from folks I don't know selling something.
I'm not endorsing more ad spam, but I'm really caught off guard that using a service with a real name/email and getting added to a CRM is generating this level of indignation.
Do none of you guys work in corporate? I get Linkedin/email/phone spam all the time. This isn't new. The only interesting thing here is that the trigger and the response time were so short.
Again, I'm not advocating for more of this or even saying I like it. I'm just saying "why are we all of a sudden upset about this?"
As somebody who's listed products on the AWS marketplace, when you "subscribe" to a product you give them your information as due course. This is obvious, spelled out, and known across all the marketplaces. So I'll assume the part you take issue is, is with reaching out to the individual on LinkedIn instead of through Azure. I don't understand how in a world where companies cold call you after buying your phone number, and spam you with emails after you try to unsubscribe, suddenly messaging you on LinkedIn is over the line.
It's strange, and I'm glad they're moving away from the practice, but to pretend it's this big privacy fiasco is disingenuous at best. They (Canonical) still have all your data, they're just being more subtle about it now. How is that better?
3a spells out what you're agreeing to share with the publisher of the product in the marketplace when you subscribe to it.
Additionally the listings each link to their respective privacy policy right underneath the subscribe button, plainly in view above the fold.
Finally, I've just attempted to subscribe to "Ubuntu Server" in the Azure Marketplace to see what it looks like, and it shows you a form with the information it's going to share with Ubuntu on the screen for you to modify before subscribing! So it seems like you arguing this isn't "obvious" is in bad faith, because it's obvious for any reasonable person who's actually used the marketplace.
Umm the point of linkedin is to make professional contacts and a professional network.
> But it would be completely unacceptable if a sales representative showed up at my house (despite me only sharing my address for billing/shipping purposes). This is basically what happened to the Azure customer.
This would be like the sales rep turning up at your office during office hours and leaving a card for you.
The person used a corporate account and the person was contacted via a method used to contact people about professional matters.
I don't want some "relationship" with a company just because I buy their product.
When you buy a product you agree to whatever terms there are, you only get to write terms if you’re writing up a contract.
This thread explains it in more detail: https://twitter.com/dezren39/status/1359726235929223168
Seems pretty simple. No real story, other than the OP not paying attention.
That southpark episode, while disturbing, amusingly is spot on.
You buy a toaster, and someone from the toaster company comes to your house to try and sell you a microwave. "I see you like to warm foods, let's talk about some other ways our products can help you with that!"
Wait, now I'm not confident that doesn't/didn't happen, geez...
You've never needed warranty support before? I'm not aware of ways in which that works without them knowing who you are, or where they should mail the repaired product back to.
The issue is the poster spun up the instance in the course of his job. Microsoft and canonical would be reasonable to share that job related info.
But instead it appears that either they shared his personal info which would be unethical, or canonical takes the de-identified job info and then matches it with personal info.
In most transactions between people acting as representatives of their business, it would be very creepy for one of the businesses to then get personal info on the representative of the other business like their social media accounts or home address, especially if they do it using secret/obfuscated manners rather than explicit asking.
What would be weird is sending me a message through there before the meeting. If we are speaking using another channel (like work email accounts), stay on that channel. This is what has gone wrong in this case.
No worries with sending a connection request after our meeting “nice to meet you today and looking forward to collaborating, cheers”
As a side note it’s always funny when we are in the middle of a meeting and a notification pops up that they have looked at my profile. It’s like “hello... pay attention... I’m right here...”
If their message went: "We saw you drove to XYZ using our model Y", addressed to a private contact line of yours, then that would also lead to quite a few "wtf?" along the lines of "What data is Hertz sharing with Ford?"
Ummm... no?