The following is a condensed version of an email conversation that I am currently having with a company. I'm not naming the company - for the time being. I want to see where this goes.
The product is one of those picture frames that can display images sent via email by family and friends. I would register the device with an email address and people can use that email address to send images to the frame.
Now, I can create a new email address for myself, something that I don't care about, but I was concerned about what happens with the email addresses of the people that send images to the device, or more specifically, to the company's servers. I don?t want them to get spammed, so I looked up their Privacy Policy.
I quote:
"From time to time, we may share email addresses with our partners for ad targeting. They will never email you for any reason."
OK, perhaps *I* am the "you" that they are talking about since I own the product. So I emailed them:
"My concern is that the email addresses of my family and friends may be shared with your third parties partners without their knowledge or consent simply because they emailed an image to my device."
Their reply:
:...we will not share it with any 3rd parties under any circumstances. This includes the administrative email addresses that "own" the frames, as well as the email addresses used to send photos to a loved one's frame. We don't share them."
My response:
"Your Privacy Policy: We may share email addresses for ad targeting. Your response: We will not share email addresses under any circumstances.
How can both of those statements be true at the same time?"
OK, here it comes...their latest response:
"Can you please tell us where exactly did you see this on our website: '"From time to time, we may share email addresses with our partners for ad targeting. They will never email you for any reason'?
I look forward to your response"
WTF? Their customer support department is asking their *customers* to tell them where to find their own Privacy Policy?
My response:
"I must say that I am very concerned that the customer support department of (company) doesn?t even know where to find their own Privacy Policy. If the employees of (company) don?t know where to find it, how can they be expected to follow it?"
I sent them the link to the Privacy Polly page adding:
"I would direct you to the exact section that includes the words ?we may share email addresses with our partners? but I?ll leave that for you to find. It is apparent that your team is not familiar with the (company) Privacy Policy and should familiarize themselves with it, in its entirety."
Their next response should be interesting.