Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mo
From: mo@uunet.UU.NET (Mike O'Dell)
Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix
Subject: USENIX does *NOT* sell the membership list!!!
Message-ID: <9249@uunet.UU.NET>
Date: 18 Mar 88 13:26:07 GMT
Organization: UUNET Communications Services, Arlington, VA
Lines: 40

The USENIX Association does NOTE sell its membership list.
It does do mailings for companies who pay for it,
but the Association goes to some lengths to prevent
the list from falling into "inappropriate" hands.
Materials must be delivered to the Assocation "mail ready"
except for mailing labels, which are then affixed by
Association personnel and then delivered to the
Post Office by Association personnel.

How come you are getting mail from what appears to be
the Attendees's List??  It is not at all unlikely that
a person from some company registers for the conference
and then takes the list which he gets for doing so and then
gives it to a group of data entry people who simply
type it in.  Quite frankly, that is a very, very
cheap way to get what is probably a very high-quality
maling list. There is very little the Association can do
about that since the list was acquired completely legally.
What was inappropriate was the use to which it was placed.
If you are quite sure some solicitation is a result of
misuse of your USENIX registration information, by all
means tell the offending company about it.  Telling them
that you would never buy anything from someone who misuses
information will get their attention if enough people say it.

As for info from Dallas, it is quite possible that /usr/group
sells their registration list from UNIFORUM via  some mechanism,
and since they know which registrations were cross-registrations from
USENIX, that information might be available in the list, too.
Also, the person writing the solicitation might not know
the difference between USENIX and UNIFORMUM.

So, USENIX ain't doing it, but there isn't a lot the Association
administration can do about it.  You, on the other hand, can
tell companies you don't appreciate their marketting tactics.
Sometimes that gets their attention, sometimes not.


	-Mike O'Dell
	Board Candidate