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From: ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: A second look at Lotus Marketplace: Households
Message-ID: <42889@cup.portal.com>
Date: 2 Jun 91 06:31:47 GMT
References: <20164@rsiatl.Dixie.Com> <1991May30.061634.25417@looking.on.ca>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
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In all the fuss over Marketplace:Households, many things that Lotus
did to make this product less objectionable were overlooked.

Before you say "The very idea of such a product is objectionable",
let me point out (as Brad Templeton noted in an earlier posting)
that all the information Lotus was going to sell is already
available.  This information *WILL* be sold -- the only question
is who will sell it.

First of all, Lotus was concerned with misuse of the data.  They
used Dr. Alan Westin of Columbia to help design safeguards to
protect consumers.  Macworld describes Westin as "recognized as
the grand guru of privacy issues."

They limited the information so that income and lifestyle information
was only tracked down to the zip code level, not the individual
level.

They also put dummy names and addresses into the data base.  This would
allow them to detect when a mailing list was made from the CD-ROM and
then charge for that list.  They would also be able to detect misuse of
the data this way.

But Marketplace:Households is dead.  Equifax and other companies still
have the data.  It only costs about $2/disc to produce CD-ROM (plus
a fixed charge of about $1000 for initial mastering).  What's going
to happen now is clear.  Other companies will buy this data an make
CD-ROMs available.  Companies that A) don't have the resources that
Lotus has to design systems to limit access to the disc, and B) don't
have any products that are sold to end users like Lotus does, so don't
give a damn if people don't like them.

The result is going to be that the data will come out on CD-ROM, but
in a form that is much more objectionable than Marketplace:Households
was.

If you don't like the data that is available on you, you will have to
deal with N companies that probably don't care, rather than one large
company that has an interest in keeping consumers happy.

Instead of working so hard to kill this product, groups like the CPSR
should have worked with Lotus to minimize the privacy problems.  The
way to fight this kind of database is to get Congress to act, not to
get the most responsible and concerned provider of such data to leave
the field, leaving it open to other less concerned companies.

						Tim Smith