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PRIVACYnotes Digest
Protecting Privacy is Good for Business
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Published by:
Mike Banks Valentine website101
privacy@website101.com www.website101.com
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May 23, 2002 Issue # 011
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.....IN THIS DIGEST.....
// -- MODERATOR
COMMENT -- //
"Email Appending"
~ Mike Valentine
// -- NEW
DISCUSSION -- //
"DMCA and
Privacy" ~ Anonymous
// -- PRIVACY
NEWS -- //
"The Latest
in Privacy Issues"
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// -- MODERATOR
COMMENT -- //
"Psssst!
Hey buddy, check dis out over heeya. If ya give me yer database
of customas' offline info, I'll give you email addresses to match!
Waddaya say pal? $2 per name, awright?"
That's how
it might go down in a dark alley in privacy advocates' nightmare,
but the reality is that the email appending industry uses bright
chirpy banter and photos of clean-cut staffers to tell you the
story. The following link will take you to the site of a vendor
who explains email appending with Sunday-school innocence.
http://www.accudata.com/s_selfpromotion/email_append.html
Email appending
is big business. Here's how it works. A multinational corporation
wants to send out an email campaign to it's database of offline
customers, say those who purchased their computer printer and
filled out the warranty card and mailed it in. The problem? They
don't have the email addresses of those customers. Who ya gonna
call? Here, let's visit my favorite search engine, Google, and
type "email appending" into the search box. Click submit.
There are
results 1 - 10 of about 42,300. Search took 0.05 seconds. So much
for exhaustive research. Well I suppose that if you wanted to
drag things out a bit you could do a few price comparisons. The
industry is huge and profitable.
So you want
email addresses? Zip us an Excel spreadsheet of your customers
names, addresses and phone numbers and we'll send back email addresses
to match those customers with. What we won't tell you is that
we are missing a good deal of that information ourselves and you'll
be paying us to incorporate YOUR information into our email database.
If you pay us enough, we'll even tell you about those customers
lives, their taste in cars, their travel habits and their income
levels. And . . . that's not all, if you can provide us with information
on their computer system and software purchases, we'll throw in
a free recap of their credit history -- No Charge!
DoubleClick
was publicly reamed for announcing they would do this by merging
the database of a direct marketing company they acquired with
their own database of email addresses and the surfing habits of
online users. They were sued, they lost millions, they were vilified
in the press. Hmmmm. Why don't we care that 42,300 others are
doing the same thing?
I wonder
how much they'd charge to remove my information from all those
databases? I don't think I could afford to buy back my privacy.
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has introduced guidelines
on the practice. A marketing industry analyst comments in a linked
opinion piece below in news links. What do you think of the email
appending industry?
~ Mike Banks
Valentine
// -- NEW
DISCUSSION -- //
===>
TOPIC: THE DMCA AND PRIVACY
From: Anonymous
The entertainment
industry, busy with the DMCA and trying to protect their "rights"
to control our listening and viewing habits, has now decided that
our personal video recorders should be monitored as well.
Industry
Groups Rally Behind SONICblue - InternetNews DC http://dc.internet.com/news/article/0,1934,2101_1135561,00.html
The erosion
of our rights continues.
// -- PRIVACY
NEWS -- //
Moderator
note: There are two ways to access previously listed privacy news
stories. One is to visit PRIVACYnotes archives, the other
(simpler) way is to visit
http://privacynotes.com/privacy_news.html
where I also keep a privacy news archive.
Researchers
in Scotland are developing a new kind of Web monitoring software
that they claim can collect enormous amounts of data on Web surfers
while remaining nearly undetectable. The University of Strathclyde
received the award for an undisclosed sum Thursday. Dr. Lykourgos
Petropoulakis, who is heading the 18-month research project, declined
to comment on the technology, calling it "highly classified" information.
Web surveillance software has drawn intense interest from consumer
advocates, who fear the interactive nature of the Internet can
provide unprecedented power for governments, corporations and
individuals to trample people's privacy.
<http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2865194,00.html>
The agency
responsible for the U.S. Defense Department's global networks
and classified command and control systems has a gaping security
hole in its front yard -- security cameras at its headquarters
in Arlington, Va., are connected to a nonsecure and unencrypted
wireless LAN. Chris O'Ferrell, chief technology officer at NETSEC
Inc. in Herndon, Va., which provides intrusion-detection services
to numerous federal agencies and commercial customers, detected
the nonsecure wireless LAN at the Defense Information Systems
Agency (DSIA) last Friday. While parked across the street from
DISA's headquarters, O'Ferrell was able to easily map the topology
of the agency's network, including the Service Set Identifier
(SSID) numbers of access points and numerous IP addresses.
<http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/holes/story/0,10801,71231,00.html>
Ford Motor
Credit informed 13,000 consumers Friday that their personal information
-- including Social Security number, address, account number and
payment history -- was accessed by hackers who broke into a database
belonging to the Experian credit reporting agency. Federal Bureau
of Investigation special agent Dawn Clenney told NewsFactor that
the data breach is being investigated and that law enforcement
is working with Ford, which believes the hack occurred sometime
between April 2001 and February 2002. Letters to the 13,000 people,
400 of whom were Ford credit customers, were mailed out in the
last three weeks. Privacy advocates, who point to identity theft's
ascent as the top crime in the United States, called the exposure
another example of insufficient privacy protection in the country.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/17826.html
A Senate
committee appeared set on Thursday to pass a controversial measure
that would limit the way businesses could use customers' personal
information, until it was delayed by a parliamentary maneuver.
The Senate Commerce Committee voted to approve several changes
to the bill, designed to increase Internet privacy by limiting
how businesses use phone numbers, purchase records and data collected
through their Web sites. But a final vote to send the bill to
the full Senate was blocked by Sen. Trent Lott, who invoked an
obscure parliamentary rule that can prohibit a committee from
taking action two hours after the Senate convenes.
<http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=technologynews&StoryID=972478>
Provisions
of two new bills -- one to increase online "cybersecurity," the
other to aid in the prosecution of online child pornography --
would remove statutory protections that safeguard personal data
in the hands of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Current law
protects the privacy of electronic communications by prohibiting
ISPs from disclosing to the government their customers' e-mail
without a court order. The two new bills open loopholes in that
protection by creating broad new categories of "voluntary" disclosure.
http://www.cdt.org/legislation/107th/wiretaps/
On May 16,
the Senate Commerce Committee marked-up S. 2201, the Online Privacy
Protection Act, introduced by Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC).
"Marking up" a bill means amending it in a formal Committee session
where Members or Senators offer amendments, debate them and vote
on them. Often at mark-up many amendments are rolled into a single
"substitute" offered by the bill's sponsor. The Hollings bill
as introduced, CDT's analysis of it, and the text of the amendments
adopted on May 16 are all available at
http://www.cdt.org/legislation/107th/privacy/hollings.shtml
E-mail address
appending is the process of adding an individualÕs e-mail address
to that individual's record inside a marketerÕs existing database.
This is accomplished by matching the marketerÕs database against
a third party, permission-based database to produce a corresponding
e-mail address. I was amazed that the organization (Direct Marketing
Association) danced around privacy issues by creating a loophole
extravaganza. The document was written by marketers for marketers,
culminating in a classic case of a wolf in sheepÕs clothing. Opinion
column by Rodney Much.
http://www.optinnews.com/news/showart.asp?DB=NewsTable&ID=1230
Mike Banks Valentine is a champion of the true small online business.
He advocates a do-it-yourself approach to e-commerce through online
learning for the small office, home office (SOHO) or emerging entrepreneur
who lacks major venture capital funding or corporate marketing budgets.