Wednesday, February 22, 2006
What else do you want us to do?
So, what happens when a marketing firm violates its own privacy policy? Even worse, what happens when that firm does it to a telecom industry consultant? How should it make amends?
Well, violating my trust relationship is exactly what happened recently. A company called N5R.com sent me an invitation to respond to a promotion on behalf of one of their clients - a car company. The problem is that N5R addressed the email to an address that I used for a one time only promotion from one of their other clients.
There is an advantage to owning an entire domain: everytime I sign up for a website, I use a different email address. That way I know who is selling my name.
In this instance, I was pretty sure that the original client had not sold their list to a car company. According to its website, N5R does work in the telecom sector - my area of business. It just seems to me that companies operating as an outsourcer - running promotions on behalf of major firms - should not be able to blow the trust that comes with people giving them information.
Maybe in baseball you get three strikes before you get called out - but I think this is more like sudden death play-offs; you lose once and you are out of the tournament.
Well, violating my trust relationship is exactly what happened recently. A company called N5R.com sent me an invitation to respond to a promotion on behalf of one of their clients - a car company. The problem is that N5R addressed the email to an address that I used for a one time only promotion from one of their other clients.
There is an advantage to owning an entire domain: everytime I sign up for a website, I use a different email address. That way I know who is selling my name.
In this instance, I was pretty sure that the original client had not sold their list to a car company. According to its website, N5R does work in the telecom sector - my area of business. It just seems to me that companies operating as an outsourcer - running promotions on behalf of major firms - should not be able to blow the trust that comes with people giving them information.
Maybe in baseball you get three strikes before you get called out - but I think this is more like sudden death play-offs; you lose once and you are out of the tournament.
Posted by Mark Goldberg @ 2/22/2006 03:05:00 PM 
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