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From: herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Those (henious) Information Brokers; who are they?
Message-ID: <4487.2825426c@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
Date: 6 May 91 16:47:56 GMT
References: <kadie.672519846@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu> <57Hy12w164w@dogface>
Distribution: na
Lines: 36

In article <57Hy12w164w@dogface>, bei@dogface (Bob Izenberg) writes:
> kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
> 
>> Well, the ACLU doesn't actually give the list to Greenpeace.
> 
> Nice spin on that one, ACLU... 

This is not an ACLU idea.  It is standard operating practice in an
industry that rents out one time use of a valuable business asset.

> I get (let's hypothesize) ACLU mailings.
> The ACLU list begets the Greenpeace list.  I know that the junk mailer
> provides plausible deniability for both sides, but if I never was on the
> ACLU list, I'd never see the Greenpeace mailings.  One organization has
> given their mailing list to the other, even if a middleman company puts
> the mailings together.

The middleman company is called a bonded letter shop.  The mailing list
owner does not sell its list.  It rents one time use of the list for a
use it considers suitable.

(You don't want the people on your list to become annoyed - you screen
carefully the packages that mailers want to send to your list to make
sure you consider them suitable for your friends.  And you screen it
before you contract to let them send it to your list.)

To make sure the list is used only once, the list is not delivered to
the organization renting it, only to the bonded letter shop.  The bond
is to protect the list owner from potential thieves.  For the same reason,
the list is salted - the owner puts his great aunt Sally on it, and a bunch
of other entries that are there only so he will know when mail goes to the
list.  Of course, dear Aunt Sally gives him, unopened, all mail that comes
with her name misspelled that way.                   

dan herrick
herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com