Today, a new era in video chat launched with Airtime, aka Facebook-connected Chatroulette without flashers. How exactly can Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning promised us us that there will be no rude bits? Turns out Airtime is recording you — and if you’re flashing, it’s recording that too.
Maybe we should’ve known that, as with Facebook, privacy concerns would arise sooner or later from the new startup. By linking the account to your Facebook account, all of the anonymising fun of Chatroulette is suddenly gone. Bad because parts of your identity will be known, but good because, well, considerably fewer penises — and the company really wants to make sure it stays that way. That’s why they want to record your information, at least according to the company’s privacy policy. Check out this excerpt taken from section 3, How is my information stored?:
Airtime provides a place for social interaction via live video and text chat and it provides you with the opportunity to create, submit, post, display, transmit, perform, publish, distribute or broadcast (“Post”) User Content. Any User Content you Post is subject to the guidelines provided in our Terms of Use and you should note that we reserve the right to report any potentially illegal behaviour on our Service to the authorities. By using our Service, you are consenting to have your image and conversations recorded by Airtime. Airtime is taking snapshots of User Content may review User Content to maintain site safety and ensure a good user experience.
And how long is that information stored? Forever.
In theory, if you’re never mischevious, and nobody ever reports you, Airtime may never review what you’ve been doing with the service. But still, it’s stored somewhere. That’s pretty creepy for a company trying to keep people from doing creepy things. [Airtime via Business Insider]