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wapu
Broadband Ranger
Premium Member
join:2001-09-05
Albion, NY

wapu

Premium Member

Sharing email lists

Hey guys, I have a question about the ethical ramifications of sharing email lists with partners.

The website Privacy-Policy states:

Do we disclose the information we collect to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information unless we provide you with advance notice, except as described below. The term "outside parties" does not include [NAME OF WEBSITE].com. It also does not include website hosting partners and other parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others' rights, property, or safety.

We have a partner eCommerce website that we collect payment for and do fulfillment on for a well known celebrity. The celebrity website is run by them and we log into the back end and fulfill the orders and all of the payment comes into our merchant account and is deposited into our account.

We also sell the same products on our main company website. The celebrities agent wants a copy of the email address of the people who bought the same product they sell on the celebrities site from our site.

What is your guys' general impression of this? Does it seem to violate our privacy policy or would this sharing of data be part of the "conducting our business" clause in the privacy policy? Is this something we could technically do, but would be bad for customer service?

I personally would hate to buy a Samsung TV from Bestbuy.com and then have Samsung emailing me. I would opt-out from best buy in a second.

Any ideas or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Robert
Premium Member
join:2001-08-25
Miami, FL

Robert

Premium Member

I wouldn't release it. Do you have a legal department to run this by?

cdru
Go Colts
MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN

cdru to wapu

MVM

to wapu
Agreed. I wouldn't. The "other parties who assist us" clause is to allow you to use external services for YOUR business, not other business's purposes.

For instance, my company has a mailing list of our dealers and customers. We use MailChimp for email campaigns, and SurveyMonkey for surveys. We're allowed to use those by a similar privacy policy because those two services are using the lists for OUR business.

Although I don't particularly endorse it, you could work in conjunction with $CELEBRITY_AGENT and you send out an email branded with your company's but promoting the $CELEBRITY...depending on what the exact content. If I bought a Samsung TV from Amazon, I don't think it would be uncalled for for Amazon to send a "Thanks for buying a Samsung TV, we wanted to inform you of these other great opportunities for Samsung products..."

wapu
Broadband Ranger
Premium Member
join:2001-09-05
Albion, NY

wapu to Robert

Premium Member

to Robert
said by Robert:

I wouldn't release it. Do you have a legal department to run this by?

Thanks for the quick feedback.

I suggested that and the the owner that wants to share doesn't want to get legal involved. I tried to explain to her how that feeling should be her first red flag that something is wrong, but she is not usually the most reasonable person in the office. I would go directly, but our legal is not "in house" and I don't have a direct method for contacting them.

DC DSL
There's a reason I'm Command.
Premium Member
join:2000-07-30
Washington, DC
Actiontec GT784WN

DC DSL to cdru

Premium Member

to cdru
said by cdru:

Agreed. I wouldn't. The "other parties who assist us" clause is to allow you to use external services for YOUR business, not other business's purposes.

I require that contracts with third-party service providers include clauses expressly prohibiting them from using my clients' data for any purpose other than what we're hiring them to do, and that they agree to pay bigtime monetary damages if they violate in any manner. We also salt the databases with vendor-specific records so if there's a violation, we immediately know precisely who it was and they can't claim it wasn't them or somehow an accident.