Why companies that promise not to sell your data can sell it anyway

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It's all in the fine print: the deal is altered when bankruptcy or a similar corporate shakeup takes place. Then details you've let them know about you might end up on the block.

Many large firms are at it, too, the NYT reports.

Provisions like that act as a sort of data fire sale clause. They are becoming standard among the most popular sites, according to a recent analysis by The New York Times of the top 100 websites in the United States as ranked by Alexa, an Internet analytics firm.

Of the 99 sites with English-language terms of service or privacy policies, 85 said they might transfer users' information if a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, asset sale or other transaction occurred, The Times's analysis found. The sites with these provisions include prominent consumer technology companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn, in addition to Hulu.

It's not just desperate fire sales, either. When Facebook bought WhatsApp, users of both services soon "began to notice some odd coincidences" explained by Facebook quietly merging the two sites' data sets. Companies noted by the NYT as having better policies: Etsy and Weather.com.