As the painful destruction of the once-mighty RadioShack empire continues in the US, administrators have been selling off anything worth anything — including a massive trove of customer data, much to the displeasure of some states’ Attorneys General. And now, Apple is joining the good fight.
As it currently stands, the data of 117 million RadioShack victims — including more than 13 million email addresses and 65 million physical addresses — has been sold to hedge fund Standard General for $US26.2 million. But that sale is subject to legal proceedings from the states of Texas and Tennessee, which have filed objections due to be heard on May 20.
According to Ars Technica, Apple has now added its voice to the objections, saying that the RadioShack database contains information about customers who bought iPhones and iPads in stores. And, crucially, RadioShack signed an agreement not to sell of the data of Apple’s precious customers:
“The Reseller Agreement between Apple and RadioShack protects information collected by RadioShack regarding purchasers of Apple products (the “Apple Customer Information”) and prohibits the proposed sale of such information,”
AT&T is also embroiled in the fight, albeit in a less altruistic way: it only wants records destroyed, so that they don’t fall into the hands of competitors in the market. [Ars Technica]