Today is the Independence Day of Pakistan. I was on facebook and saw this advertisement on the right side bar saying that celebrate the independence day with PIA (Pakistan international airline) and play game of spotting the difference’s between the PIA planes.
When i clicked the link, it took me to the application and it asked me to click to start playing. And there we go, on next page it was asking for the information which i was really not comfortable in sharing, specially with a corrupt organization like this.
The information included name, email address, gender, age, mobile phone number and city. Now why the hell would PIA require them from some one for just a game? or for independence related celebrations?
I will suggest everyone to be ware of this type of spams. Even if they don’t plan to use it for any illegal purposes, it can still be used for selling it to other companies, or use for marketing purpose and even for tracking. And even if we accept that it will not be used for any such purpose, why do they need it? The page no where mentions how they will use this information?
Here is the screenshot of the page (click to enlarge)
Well, I am truly surprised to see this type of activity being done by an airline company. And even if they have legitimate reasons to get this information, why didn’t they have a privacy policy on the page? They are no newbies, been in business for decades, they still need to know these rules and basics?