Best Buy

Best Buy is a national chain of stores that specializes in selling technology products.

Incidents

Discontinuation of Insignia Connect App

On November 6, 2019, Best Buy discontinued support for their Insignia Connect app. This resulted in major functionality losses for affected Insignia products that used the service. Best Buy did provide compensation to affected customers, however, this was only in the form of a partial refund in the form of a virtual gift card that was determined by the product type. Customers were also only able to redeem up to 10 serial numbers for product refunds, even if they owned more affected products. Refunds for affected products has since ceased, as the window to apply for compensation only lasted for 56 days after the discontinuation date.

Data Privacy Concerns

According to Best Buy's privacy policy, the company may collect, sell, and share information that you willingly provide, as well as information gathered through various tracking technologies.

In general, you may be asked to provide the company with your name, various forms of contact information, and payment information.

In "certain situations", you may also be asked to provide:

• Driver's license number
• Social security number
• Demographic and lifestyle information
• Health information
• Fingerprints
• Facial/wrist geometry (although the policy states this occurs in real time and the data is not retained)

The company may also collect data that you do not knowingly or explicitly provide:

• Camera and sensor data (from physical store locations)
• Your IP address
• Your browser information, browsing history, and referring URL
• The unique IMEI/UDID or MAC address of your mobile device
• The IDFA (Apple ID) or AAID (Google ID) of your mobile device
• Location information

This data collection can occur directly through your browser/device, or through third party web tracking technologies such as cookies, pixels and tags.

All of the above information can be sold or shared with third parties, including Best Buy's "subsidaries" and "affiliates."

The policy exhibits some additional traits that privacy-conscious individuals would likely find concerning:

• Users are opted in to data collection/sharing by default
• The company does not honor the "do not track" request some browsers are able to set
• It is not easy to quickly read the policy and understand exactly what is collected and how it is shared
• Opting out may require you to provide some of the information that you don't want collected
• Opt-out must be done per browser/device, and is stored with a simple browser cookie. If the cookie is erased, the user must opt out again