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Subject:RE: spam and who you formerly were From:"McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> To:Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> Date:Thu, 1 Mar 2012 15:11:42 -0500
Seriously?
You have received messages from a company that was bought by another company, that was bought by another company, 3, 6, 9 years ago, and they never failed to inform you that "If you don't recognize our name, it's because you gave your co-ordinates to a company that was either an acquisition of ours, or one with which we are associated by some chain of ownership, up or down or sideways, or in some partnership covered by disclaimer in our privacy policy"?
Every time I've left an e-mail address at some site, because I was willing to trade it for access to something (usually info), I was directed to a "Privacy Policy" that pretty-much invariably said "this company or our subsidiaries, owners, partners, or entities that need specific personal data in order to fulfill transactions...."
Are there people on this list who imagine that if you provide e-mail addresses or other identifying info to a company/web-site, they don't keep it until it gets dusty, and anybody who buys them doesn't get your name/data as part of the assets? And that if they fail and get broken up into components for salvage, your data doesn't become the property of some jobber, with the full, compliant agreement of all relevant government entities?
Anyway, I'm using the current little incident to prod the high priest(s/esses) of the corporate website to include some additional language and to implement some sort of visible, reliable, automated opt-out system.
From: Gene Kim-Eng [mailto:techwr -at- genek -dot- com]
Sent: March-01-12 1:25 PM
To: McLauchlan, Kevin
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: spam and who you formerly were
I don't see that the original complainant has anything to be embarrassed about. If your company did not inform the people you were mailing that it is the new DBA identity of a company they previously signed on to receive information from, your messages were indistinguishable from SPAM. You still did it to yourselves.
Gene Kim-Eng
On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 9:46 AM, McLauchlan, Kevin <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com<mailto:Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>> wrote:
I hope that the complainant will do the decent thing and go back
to the other mailing list with an update (even if s/he has to
embarrass him/herself a little in the process). If not, the member of
this list who originally alerted me might assist. :)
Anyway, some things that might be of value for y'all as well as for me:
- if your company has ever bought another, maybe you should
include that info in a relevant part of your website, to head off
any accusations of spam "If you ever corresponded with any
of these companies (see list below), you corresponded with us, and
might therefore receive mail from us in future."
The information contained in this electronic mail transmission
may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected
from disclosure. If you have received this communication in
error, please notify us immediately by replying to this
message and deleting it from your computer without copying
or disclosing it.
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