Johnson & Johnson:
Donate a Photo, the free donation app from Johnson & Johnson takes your photos and turns them into a way to do good. For every photo you share through Donate a Photo, Johnson & Johnson will donate $1 to the charity of your choice.
Your photos can do things like help a newborn breathe with Save the Children, get school supplies for a girl in Guatemala with Girl Up, or help a deployed service member call home with the USO.
The web site says your photos won’t be used “to sell any products or for any other commercial purposes.” This looks like a great way to donate to some of the associated charities.
So if J&J aren’t going to use the photos for any commercial purpose, where’s the catch? Are you linking yourself to them in some other way? Does the free photo donation app have access to other information? Does it monitor you after you’ve sent the photo through it?
Here’s an idea; if you think those charities are worth supporting, send them a dollar (or more) DIRECTLY, not through some app that’s tied to a commercial entity. If J&J were really feeling so generous, they could donate the $800 or $5,000 to each cause without needing the public to do something.
Are we really so cheap than donating a dollar to a cause we profess to support is too much effort?
Another part of the small print on their page says “application may contain links to websites where our privacy policy does not apply”. It’s well known that privacy policies are worth little anyway, but this app will take you places were even that minimal protection does not apply.