So a “mailing list”
is more like a dossier. I would also ask if OfficeMax paid for more
than a name and address. Was there enough additional information to
target their ads?
How to get really,
really, really bad press. From NBC in Chicago:
An
(sic) suburban Chicago couple who lost
their teenage daughter in a car crash last year feels as if they
were victimized again after receiving a letter from OfficeMax
Thursday.
The
envelope was addressed to Mike Seay, but the second line read
“Daughter Killed in Car Crash.”
Office Max apologized,
of course, and explained:
This
mailing is a result of a mailing list rented through a third-party
provider. We have reached out to the third-party mailing list
provider to research what happened.
Apart from the stunning
hurtfulness of a letter addressed that way, the father raises some
excellent questions:
“Why
would they have that type of information? Why would they need that?”
Seay told NBC5. “What purpose does it serve anybody to know that?
And how much other types of other information do they have if they
have that on me, or anyone else? And how do they use that, what do
they use that for?”
Read more on NBC.
“If we ship you
something, you damn well better buy it!”
Amazon
Wants to Send You Stuff Before You’ve Even Decided to Buy It
… In December,
Amazon was granted
U.S.
Patent No. 8,615,473 B2 for what the company
describes as “anticipatory shipping,” or a way of initiating the
delivery process before a customer even clicks “buy.” The idea
is to cut down delivery time and, possibly, make it even less
necessary to visit brick and mortar stores.
… Sucharita
Mulpuru, a Forrester Research analyst, told
the Wall Street Journal: “It
appears Amazon is taking advantage of their copious data. Based on
all the things they know about their customers they could predict
demand based on a variety of factors.”
Interesting how
bureaucrats duck what seems to be a simple question. Do they assume
no one will notice?
USED has replied to a
letter sent by Senator Markey concerning the privacy of student
information. You can read their response here
(pdf). I’m still working my way through it, but it’s obvious
that a lot of their response is that they have issued “guidance.”
But “guidance” does not have the force of regulation and FERPA
does not provide parents and students with any private cause of
action. So I’ll keep working my way through their response, but
already know that whatever they say lacks teeth.
(Related)
Margo Day,
Vice-President, U.S. Education at Microsoft, writes:
We
have been working diligently with our customers in the K12 community
to help them understand and meet data privacy obligations as schools
increasingly move to innovative cloud-based services. A recently
published study by the Fordham Center for Law and Information Policy
makes it clear that there is still much work to be done. The
positive reactions to the study and its recommendations– from
school
leaders, parent groups, industry
groups
and policy
makers– suggests there is a unique opportunity for these groups
to work together to solve many of the issues highlighted in the
study. In particular, the study demonstrates that our industry needs
to step up and be a better partner with schools by being more
transparent about how we handle their data and by agreeing
to clear restrictions on how we will use their data,
including agreeing not use such data for advertising, sales or
marketing purposes.
Those
common sense recommendations are just part of the improved
transparency related to use of student and institution data that our
industry owes its customers in the education community.
Read more on Microsoft
in Education Blog. h/t, The
Journal
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