While flying between Boston and Los Angeles last week on business, I had the opportunity to use the in-flight WiFi service offered on Virgin America. The WiFi service is GoGo, which turns the entire plane into a flying hot-spot.
The WiFi service is free on Virgin America until January 15, 2010. It was convenient since I had plenty of time during the 6-hour flight to surf the Internet at 37,000 feet. My only complaint about the GoGo in-flight Internet service: it doesn't provide consumers with the opportunity to read the GoGo Privacy Policy before signing up.
You can read the GoGo Terms Of Use policy before signing up, which I did. While reading it, I noticed a link in it to the GoGo Privacy Policy. When I followed that link, the GoGo Privacy Policy page wouldn't load in my Web browser.
This seemed unfriendly to consumers and unnecessary.
GoGo is no small operation. According to a company press release, GoGo already has one-million customers. GoGo is produced by Aircell LLC. It should be easy to provide access to both policies before sign-up.
Perhaps you are like most consumers and don't read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy at a web site before registering to use that site. I read these documents because I want to know what I am registering for, and what support the company will provide should things go bad. These documents often disclose what data of yours the Web site will keep, reuse, and resell to other companies.
In my opinion, to ignore and not read a Web site's Terms of Service and Privacy policies is like surfing the Internet with your eyes shut. You may get where you are going, but you'll probably encounter plenty of difficulty along the way.
While I doubt there were any side-jacking thieves on board my flights, consumers should have access to both the Terms of Service and Privacy policies before signing up... especially with in-flight services like GoGo, which will become more commonplace.
When I returned from my business trip, there was an e-mail message in my in-box from GoGo asking me to provide feedback about their WiFi service. That survey and this blog post should be adequate feedback.