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Protecting customer data

There have been a number of reports recently about customer lists leaking out through ESPs. In one case, the ESP attributed the leak to an outside hack. In other cases, the ESPs and companies involved have kept the information very quiet and not told anyone that data was leaked. People do notice, though, when they use single use addresses or tagged addresses and know to whom each address was submitted. Data security is not something that can be glossed over and ignored.
Most of the cases I am aware of have actually been inside jobs. Data has been stolen either by employees or by subcontractors that had access to it and then sold to spammers. There are steps that companies can take to prevent leaks and identify the source when or if they do happen.

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e360 sues a vendor

As if suing themselves out of business by going after Comcast and Spamhaus weren’t enough, e360 is now suing Choicepoint for breach of contract and CAN SPAM violations. As usual, Mickey has all the documents (complaint and answer) up at SpamSuite.
This may actually be an interesting case. On the surface it is a contractual dispute. Choicepoint sold e360 40,000,000 data records containing contact information including email addresses, snail mail addresses and phone numbers. Some of the records were marked “I” meaning they could be used for email. Some of the records were marked “O” meaning they could not be used for email.
Despite these terms being reasonably well defined in the contract, e360 sent email to addresses in records marked “O.” Some of those addresses resulted in e360 being sued by recipients. During the course of the suit, e360 contacted Choicepoint and asked for indemnification. Choicepoint refused for a number of reasons, including the fact that Choicepoint told e360 the addresses were not for mailing. In response, e360 filed suit.
The interesting and relevant part of this case is the CAN SPAM violation that e360 alleges.

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How to devalue your mailing lists

This morning I got spam about college basketball – Subject: Inside: your ESPN Tourney Guide. That’s anything but unusual, but this spam got through my spam filters and into my inbox. That’s a rare enough event that I’m already annoyed before I click on the mail in order to mark it as spam.
Wait a second, the spam claims to be from Adobe. And it’s sent to a tagged address that I only gave to Adobe. Sure enough, it’s Adobe and ESPN co-branded spam about college basketball sent to an Adobe list.
Down at the bottom of the email there’s a blob of tiny illegible text, in very pale grey on white. Buried in there is an opt-out link: “If you’d prefer not to receive e-mail like this from Adobe in the future, please click here to unsusbscribe“.
I’d prefer not to receive college sports spam from anyone, including Adobe, so I click on it and find a big empty white webpage with this in the middle of it:

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