Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!gatech!mcnc!ecsgate!ecsvax!seals From: seals@uncecs.edu (Larry W. Seals) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Lotus Marketplace Keywords: CD-Rom consumer database,privacy Message-ID: <1990Nov16.205011.10348@uncecs.edu> Date: 16 Nov 90 20:50:11 GMT Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service Lines: 29 I saw an article in the WSJ this week that Lotus will be releasing a new product called Lotus Marketplace which is a CD based database of 80 million households. Included in this database will be information such as names, addresses, shopping habits and income. Consumers can be categorized by socio-economic groups and targeted accordingly. Initial offering will be 5000 names for around $695 with additional groups of 5000 available for around $400. The ACLU and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (through Marc Rotenberg) have denounced the venture as a violation of privacy. Lotus maintains that the information is available anyway through mass-marketing firms and they will only sell to legit businesses and will keep a "fraud list" of abusers. Their critics say that Lotus Marketplace with it's ease of use/access, low cost and the difficulty in enforcement of the non-abuse policies will make it ripe for privacy abuses. I foresee someone seriously slamming Lotus for the actions of some greedy marketer on this one. It's bad enough that every government agency in the US has a database that might have our names in it and mail order houses send crap to my door with six different spellings of my name. I have the feeling that the worst is yet to come here on the frontier. ********************************************************************** Larry Seals @ Trailing Edge Software - "When it doesn't have to be the very best!" "If Pro is the opposite of Con, what is Congress the opposite of?" **********************************************************************