P.S.: "Furl collects personal information, gives this personal information to online partners for commercial purpose, including your e-mail address. Thus I don't want to use furl and probably neither do you.

In short: Furl Sucks."

Sadly, most privacy policies are equally obtuse and one-sided. Companies are usually quite frank in these documents, but the news is seldom good. I'd imagine that a broader analysis of different privacy and data usage statements would yield similar insights.

I haven't checked into what Tucows privacy statement looks like in a long time - we probably have several policies by now given the different lines of business that we're in. I'm also sure that even we have similar stuff buried in our legalese. The funny thing is that I can guarantee you that we don't do the kinds of things that our privacy statements likely allow for - most of this stuff is just adopted from other privacy statements or stuck in by well-intentioned people trying to make sure that these documents are comprehensive and inclusive (i.e. aren't so specific that they are obsolete the second they are published).

I'll have to poke around at what kind of things our privacy statements allow for when I get a chance at some point...