Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/p-03352.html ----- Forwarded message from owner-politechat_private ----- Return-Path: <Dave_Touretzkyat_private> From: Dave_Touretzkyat_private To: Ben Isaacson <benat_private> Cc: politechat_private Subject: none dare call it "spam" ? Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 00:47:19 -0500 Hi, Ben. This is in response to your defense of Godiva.com on Politech: You are correct that I did not read the Godiva privacy policy before ordering. Silly me! I assumed that a long-established, nationally-known company would know better than to screw with its customers this way, and that I needn't read every word of their lengthy online "privacy" policy before ordering a simple gift of chocolates for a sick friend. I guess they taught me a lesson, huh? As for the definition of "spam": unwanted bulk email is spam. Just because I ordered a box of chocolates doesn't mean I gave Godiva permission to put me on a mailing list. Amazon learned this the hard way when they started spamming their customers and got a lot of people furious with them. Apparently Godiva wasn't paying attention. While the Godiva privacy policy says they will not give out my email ADDRESS to third parties, it also says at http://www.godiva.com/customer/privacy.asp that they WILL offer third parties the use of that information: "Additionally, we occasionally make portions of our mailing list available to other reputable companies whose products may be of interest to you ..." There you have it. Godiva is pimping my information to third parties. Whether that's done in a way that prevents further harvesting of my email address is irrelevant. They're still taking money from other companies for the privilege of lobbing turds into my mailbox. I object to this. Finally, you point out that Godiva's solicitations include an opt-out option. Unfortunately, that "option" is just a URL for a web site where you're supposed to manually type in an email address to be removed. But the spam they send out does not indicate what address they're using to spam you, so if you have many addresses, or if your address can take many forms (as mine does), you have know way of knowing what string is in their database! The unsubcribe URL that Godiva provides appears to be for stopping delivery of Godiva's email newsletter. The privacy policy indicates that one must call the 800 number to prevent being spammed by third parties. What I asked Godiva to do when I wrote to them was remove me entirely from their database. Forget I ever existed, because they're not going to make another dime in sales from me for as long as they continue to treat their customers with this kind of contempt. Not surprisingly, there has been no reply. When customers insist on REAL privacy policies instead of fig leaves, companies do comply, or their customers go elsewhere. I order my books from Barnes & Noble, not Amazon, because of Amazon's repeated bad behavior. Godiva may be a big name, but there are lots of other chocolatiers selling over the web who do not thumb their noses at customer privacy. I urge Politech readers to patronize them. -- Dave Touretzky ----- End forwarded message ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Politech dinner in SF on 4/16: http://www.politechbot.com/events/cfp2002/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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