Web Firms Choose Profit Over Privacy

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: tim finin <finin () cs umbc edu>
Organization: UMBC http://umbc.edu/
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 08:53:21 -0400
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Web Firms Choose Profit Over Privacy

There's an interesting long article in today's Washington Post that
describes some of the practices and techniques of marketers to get and
use personal information.

--

Web Firms Choose Profit Over Privacy
By Jonathan Krim, Washington Post, 1 June 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54888-2003Jun30.html?nav=hpto
p_tb

To parents interested in buying the popular Hooked on Phonics
learn-to-read programs, the company made a firm promise on its Web
site: It would never sell or rent their personal information to other
marketers.  But that pledge was empty. In the pages of a marketing
trade publication, Gateway Learning Corp., the product's
California-based parent company, was advertising to rent the list of
Hooked on Phonics buyers to other marketers.  At a price of $95 per
1,000 names, companies could arrange to have unsolicited advertising
sent to 105,936 people who bought Hooked on Phonics in the past
year. Included in the information made available to other marketers:
ages of the buyers' children.

After inquiries from The Washington Post, the company changed its
privacy policy and is no longer promising to keep such data from being
offered to others. A company spokeswoman said the firm was simply slow
to update its policy. Previous customers would be notified of the
change and offered the chance to remove themselves from the list, she
said.

Hooked on Phonics is one example of retailers, marketers and an array
of service providers expanding their collection and use of consumers'
e-mail addresses and other personal information, despite broad
assurances to protect individual privacy and honor consumers' choices
about how much marketing they want to receive.

Many firms use tactics designed to hide their intent to gather and
profit from the data they collect, information that grows in value as
more and more people use the Internet for information and shopping.
"Companies continually troll for, and exploit, personally identifiable
information," said Joseph Turow, a media professor at the University
of Pennsylvania who specializes in mass marketing. "Some Web sites
unabashedly collect all the information they can about visitors and
market [it] as aggressively as they can to advertisers and other
marketers."
...
With the onslaught of spam, almost all companies promise not to sell
consumer data. But many don't mention that such information is
rented. This means that the list owner won't release the data to an
outside marketer, but it will send messages to the list on the
outsider's behalf. Targeted lists available for rent number in the
thousands, including those from magazines, professional organizations
and even political interest groups such as Republicans for Jesus.

Recently, for example, the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation
advertised that its list of donors, including postal addresses, was
for rent.  A charity spokeswoman said that the rental list includes
data only from donors who gave through direct-mail appeals, not
online. But she acknowledged that those people were provided no
privacy information; the charity's Web site says it will never sell or
share e-mail addresses of donors. Direct-mail donors will now be given
a chance to remove their names from the donor list, the spokeswoman
said, adding that the organization's lists are offered only to
"like-minded" groups.
...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54888-2003Jun30.html?nav=hpto
p_tb


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