[9485] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Inmac, junk mail, and the death of the net...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean Donelan)
Thu Jan 6 19:38:34 1994
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 17:30:45 -0600 (CST)
From: Sean Donelan <SEAN@sdg.dra.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Barry Shein wrote:
>This occurred to me but then it occurred to me that Inmac will
>wallpaper every employee at a company with their catalogs so 300 new
>names at one corporate address probably wouldn't raise any flags for
>them, it probably happens frequently. What they would need is some
>kind of corporate DB that lists approximate number of employees or
>some such thing to cross-check against. They're available, not even
>very expensive.
That's why I was thinking "new" names. Even in large companies, I think
it would be unusual to suddenly (depending on Inmac's mailing schedule,
in a month/quarter/year) have 300 new people at the same location. While
it would happen if the company moved their headquarters or a plant, I
don't know many companies that hire at that rate at one location. McDonalds
may hire/fire 1,000's of people everyday world-wide, but not at one store.
But then again, I may just be reading the RISKS list too much. I'm not
in the direct mail business, so I just don't understand these things.
You're probably correct, that from a strict dollars and cents point
of view, it is too expensive to even worry about 300 catalogs when you
are mailing millions of them. I'm certain in the future the direct mail
industry will get better at figuring out Internet user addresses.
Picking up on Steve Crocker's note:
>The policy question: with respect to harvesting of names from Internet
>databases, finger, etc., if you could have the policy of your choice,
>what would it be?
In the end, our only defense may be to figure out our own way to match
addresses (and creatively select/organize/etc, remember that Supreme Court
ruling) from interested Internet users and sell them to interested
buyers. If you can't fight them, join them. That way you could at least
impose some reasonable (to the Internet community) standards on their
use. If it is done by a voluntary double-blind method, it might even
meet some of the European data privacy laws. Heck, Internet users could
split the money they get for selling their names. "It pays to be on
our list.(tm)" [If you use this idea, be sure to give proper credit.]
So what's List Service's street address, I was thinking about filling out
an Inmac catalog request card for my "friend." :-)
--
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
Domain: sean@dra.com, Voice: (Work) +1 314-432-1100
