Retailer Sears has announced today the launch of Sears2Go, a mobile site that allows you to interact with products and services offered by Sears. Most of the products offered on Sears.com are available on Sears2Go and the merchandise can be picked up at a Sears store or delivered. There’s also a store finder - I haven’t been in a Sears store in years!

The application appears to work on any mobile device and you can even play with it on your computer. The technology for Sears2Go is provided by NY-based Usablenet. Usablenet creates a variety of branded mobile applications - it appears based on the URL redirection that they also host the mobile sites as well. Usablenet began operations in 2000 and they can transition any regular Web application into a mobile-accessible application.

This new application from Sears reminds me of the mobile applications from Pizza Hut and Papa Johns. Are these applications actually used in mass? The Sears Director of eCommerce suggests that you could place your order while stuck on a train or waiting for your child’s concert to begin.

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The professor investigating Sears’s spyware installation has discovered that the department store is also making it easy to spy on others’ home appliance purchases. If you registered at the Sears Manage My Home site, you could view the purchase history of anyone you have a name, phone number, and street address for. No password required. The retailer responded quickly to remove the feature when the news surfaced on the web, but why was such an obvious flaw present in the first place?

The site’s privacy policy says individual information will not be shared with the public, but maybe they just don’t know how this technology thing works. It may not seem like a major concern if someone knows you bought a Maytag washer/dryer combo six years ago, but Sears should be worried that the information is out there. It’s a gold mine for competitors — imagine what Best Buy could do with this information. Or a burglar casing his next heist.

Sears, the department-store operator, is inviting visitors to its website to join an online “community.” In the process, visitors may be unwittingly installing spyware from ComScore which monitors all of their online behavior “including … filling a shopping basket, completing an application form, or checking your … personal financial or health information.” Sears defends this installation process as clearly and appropriately disclosed. Computer Associates, a Harvard Business School professor, and possibly the government disagree.

The researchers argue that Sears fails to disclose its relationship with ComScore. Mentioning the tracking application and its purposes pages into a dense privacy statement and end-user l icense does not count, they say. The Federal Trade Commission may well think otherwise. The FTC has recently set standards for disclosure and consent related to third parties installing tracking software on users’ computers. The required disclosure should be clear, prominent, unavoidable, and separate from any other licensing agreements.

While Sears is taking all the flack for the tracking software, it’s really the problem of its business partner, ComScore, and the entire Internet-tracking industry. Why the deception? Because the benefits from the software flow to ComScore and other usage trackers, not the users being tracked. If Sears flashed even a token $5 discount at these people, you can bet they’d gladly hand over their privacy rights.