Sears Online 'Community' Still Looks More Like Spyware Than A Community

Last month we wrote about how Sears and K-mart's websites both were urging people to join a "community," but that community didn't seem like much of a community at all. Instead, it involved quietly installing Comscore's tracking software without telling the user, and then tracking all of their web usage. Following all of this, a VP from Sears responded to CA's original post on the subject trying to refute the claims. However, well-known spyware researcher Ben Edelman has now weighed in on the subject, checking out this "community" and finding plenty to dislike. As the initial report noted, it's not clear at all to users that they're installing Comscore's tracking app, and even the few notifications that mention it are somewhat unclear. Given that both Edelman and CA have pretty clearly documented what's happening, it's hard to see how Sears can claim that the company "goes to great lengths to describe the tracking aspect."