Couple of months ago, I got a phone call
from Redenergy. Of course they want me to quit my current energy company and
join their company, and I'll get much lower rate and big discount from them,
and blah blah..I came across this situation before with TRU and it didn't turn
out well. But I was boring so I chat with that guy for a while. After a while,
I realise that I didn't know this company till then, so how could he called me
on my cell phone and know my name? Therefore, I asked him: How did you get my
phone number and my name? I never visit your website and leave any information.
And he told me they bought it from a company specialised in collecting and
selling customers personal information. And they even have the data categorized,
like gender, age, occupation, even living area and address. Which means, they
may know me better than my classmate!!!
This is a dark side of online activity
since your personal information even personal life gets public, there is less
and less privacy left. I thought these information was collected from website
like Facebook as there are many personal info on it and everyone can see. But I
was wrong. They bought these information from all kind of other companies like
online dating, online shopping, as you have to put your real information for
these kind of website.
This is definitely unethical, and I think
it is illegal as well. But how can we stop this? What do you think?
You're right Jade, this is definitely the dark side of online activity and online marketing. Companies are spending large amounts of money just to obtain personal information about individuals to improve on their consumer touch points. They don't understand that this may be detrimental to their image, especially when they're practically 'stalking' people. Most consumers may be annoyed or even scared of these things and basically avoid any contact with the company at all. On the other hand, they may even make large number of complaints and spread bad word-of-mouth, causing more negativity for the company. But companies these days are so desperate that they force themselves to make this mistake.
ReplyDeleteI was definitetly shocked when I hear this information. And as a consumer, I would absolutly avoid these kind of company!!~
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