Ethics and acceptable behavior

"We are aware of your request not to receive e-mail from Music Boulevard and respect it. However, because you are a valued customer, we wanted to take a moment to let you know that Music Boulevard and CDNow are now one company, with a brand-new store - CDNow."
- Remarkably dumb pitch received by "Backspin" reader Matthew Steinhoff.

I just received a dozen copies of a cheesy e-mail pitch for a supposedly pheromone-based perfume. The messages told me I had a gift certificate for $20 that I could use to purchase the product.

I was annoyed to receive so many spam messages, and I decided to research the vendor. Much to my surprise, the miscreant apparently has an office in Santa Barbara, Calif., a few miles from me. Its domain no longer has an associated Web server, and the telephone number in its WHOIS record belongs to a very pleasant gentleman who has nothing to do with the spammers and could happily live without the calls he receives for the nonexistent domain owner.

I say nonexistent because there's no trace of the domain contact's name or of any other names associated with the company. Even the online order form doesn't state the company's name and details. This company does not appear to be legitimate. If anyone knows anything about a company operating as The Body Temple, please let me know - I plan to visit it soon.

But what occurs to me is that there is a curious problem here: Where do we draw the line? What is acceptable in unsolicited mailings? This is not a new question from the consumer's viewpoint, but it is an increasingly important one for vendors to address.

Certainly a dozen copies of a bogus offer from an anonymous company addressed to a slew of random recipients is way beyond the pale, but what about the CDNow pitch received by Matthew Steinhoff?

I think CDNow also crossed the line. Steinhoff had told Music Boulevard clearly (at least twice) that he didn't want to hear from it again. But not only did the company fail to remove him from its database, it handed him to CDNow. And CDNow could have handled the pitch with far more finesse than it did. Had CDNow said it had acquired Music Boulevard's records and wanted to assure him it was serious about respecting his privacy and would dispose of his data, I'm certain he would have been gratified, although he might have been annoyed that his wishes had been ignored.

But CDNow went over a boundary by not only showing that it had his data, but that it was also willing to use it to pitch him. And on top of that, it had the nerve to say it respected his wishes. Amazing! I wonder who was responsible for this breach of ethics? I would doubt it was an IS professional.

Now this is a situation in which many companies, yours included, may well find themselves. Over the next few months through acquisitions and mergers, you might well discover caches of old customer data and find that there are records flagged to show that the customers had opted-out of some program. What should you, the IS professional, do?

Simple, make sure that the rest of the company understands that opt-out customers have really opted-out. By getting involved you may be in danger of picking a fight with an 800-pound political gorilla, but you may also be saving your company's reputation and image.

When it comes to respecting privacy, IS professionals must educate the rest of the company about the ethics of the 'Net. If you don't, your companies will undoubtedly run full-tilt into trouble.

Ethical issues to nwcolumn@gibbs.com.