Company security and marketing executives differ on how to handle customer data.
Companies are in the business of selling your personal information. You that little Privacy Statement that your credit card company send to you. If you read the fine print, they are usually telling you that they are about to send your personal information to their “partners†an/or third party organizations unless you send them a written document to opt out.
I got one from Dexonline once. The law seems to favor these corporations, because it can be difficult to get off of all these lists. Its like a Anti-Privacy Virus. Once one company has your data, they send you information to there third party partners (with your silence as permission) then the third party vendors attempt to sell you an item and do the same thing (with your sheep like compliance) and so on. Pretty soon your personal information is on 10 or 20 revolving marketing lists.
I’m not opposed to some solicitations, but US law is pretty flimsy on the privacy of individuals. The CAN-SPAM act is just no enough anymore. Consumer should have to sign-up not just opt-out in written form via mail. But what happens is that companies like Comcast, AT&T, Visa, Master Card and many, many others put their right to give out your information right in the USER Agreement (which nobody reads). Since there are few alternatives that protect your privacy, they don’t feel any pressure to side with your privacy. By law, they have to provide a method of opt-out prior to selling your information, but like I said, I don’t think its enough.
Local government privacy is even worse, I’ve been reluctant to write about it because I fear that I will make it easier to for more bad guys to do bad things just because they can.