14 DAY TRIAL // Toronto-Dominion Bank, or just TD Bank, has been accused of including shady clauses in its paper contracts and online privacy policies that grant them the right to collect user browsing history, even while the user is off its official websites.
Colin Laughlan, a former journalist and communications specialist from Vancouver, Canada, discovered the dubious clauses when his Aeroplan rewards program got switched from CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) to TD Bank in 2014.
When Mr. Laughlan received his TD Bank cardholder agreement, he was stunned to find two clauses that had no reason of being there. His contract read the following:
"At the time you request to begin a relationship with us and during the course of our relationship, we may collect information including: ● Details about your browsing activity on your browser or mobile device. ● Your preferences and activities."
As you can imagine, Mr. Laughlan thought this was a wording mistake, so he checked his privacy agreement for TD Bank's online services, but was surprised to find the same clause included as well.
After spending more than 18 months arguing with bank officials to have the clause struck out of his TD Bank contracts, Mr. Laughlan decided to go public with an interview with CBC.
TD Bank removed the spying clause from their privacy policy
Bank officials have told CBC that they never actually collected any such information to begin with. TD Bank also said in a statement that it has removed the clause from its website, and will do so in paper contracts, but only after contracts will have to be reprinted.
In recent months, we've seen a lot of companies and mobile applications openly collect information on their users, sometimes publicly disclosing the fact they plan to sell it to online advertisers.
Most of the time users have scoffed at such provisions, but they're becoming more and more common, and most people are desensitized by the idea of becoming a product.
Modern mobile applications can theoretically have such capabilities, allowing their creators to collect browsing history from users.