Unroll.me, an email de-cluttering service owned by California-based data firm Slice Intelligence, wrote a seemingly disingenuous letter to the public on Sunday relating to its involvement in the latest consumer data-mining scandal, one that involved — would you believe it? — beleaguered Uber Technologies Inc.

It is “heartbreaking,” states chief executive of Unroll.me, Jojo Hedaya, in the letter (skirting a little too close to sarcasm) that users didn’t bother to read the “plain-English” privacy policy before they joined-up to Unroll.me’s free service. If they had, they might have understood one of the world’s most well-worn adages: There’s no free lunch.

Unroll.me is actually quite clear about the fact it mines and sells your data, as well as helping you unsubscribe from irksome newsletters. The service doesn’t only look for subscriptions, rather it looks at all your emails, searching for receipts, knowing what you are buying is valuable data — data that Uber, et al., want a piece of.

According to an article in the New York Times, which illustrates Uber Chief Executive Travis Kalanick’s Dionysian approach to business, Uber was buying information from Slice so it could keep track of the performance of its competitor Lyft Inc.  The story, a kind of rise-and-fall ode to the ride-hailing anti-hero – when in fact all he has done is shoot his own foot numerous times – encapsulates Kalanick’s derring-do, potentially self-harming ambitions.

“We Can Do Better,” wrote Unroll.me, as a title to its semi-apology. It is difficult to figure out what it’s trying to convey here — that we can do better by reading privacy policies? Or that Unroll.me can do better by collecting more data or being more explicit about collecting data?

The fallout from the revelations of data expropriation and Uber as a rapacious data prospector has been one of outrage and shock. From consumers we hear: “What a load of hand-in-the-cookie-jar bullshit this is.” From the media we hear: “It’s been selling you out to advertisers, and you should stop using it immediately.” Well, there are many hands in that cookie jar, so if you want to remain pure of mining violations you may have to move house, from the digital world at least.

What’s most surprising is that we consumers are shocked that our data is mined and sold, or that a reckless but arguably brilliant business competitor would buy valuable data regarding the sales of its closest rival. As the saying goes, if a service is free, you are the product, not the customer. Or, if something sounds too good to be true in the digital age, you might well be signing up to sell yourself, or some of yourself.

Image: Craig Sunter via Flickr