As a graphic designer, I subscribe to a lot of stock illustration and photo websites and I trust them to keep my contact and other information safe. But, sometimes, despite your best efforts and the faith you put into online service providers, you get a surprise.
For example, this week, I got an email from a designer showing his work and asking me to view his portfolio. It was clear he’d got my contact information from one of my favorite stock photo services because their logo was on all the images in the email. But, here’s the problem: my address and more than 300 others were clearly posted at the top of the message. The person sending it did not use BCC (blind carbon copy). He also did not have permission to email me.
I started drafting a nasty note to the sender, but instead, I contacted the stock illustration company (it took a while to find their contact email on their site) and ended my message with: “What is your privacy policy??? Please reply!”
A quick reply from a customer service rep
“First and foremost, I would like to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We take your privacy very seriously and would like to get to the bottom of this. We operate an online business and your contract with us includes the Site terms you agreed to when you opened your account alongside our privacy policy, which was updated in preparation for the new GDPR laws last year. So we may investigate this further, can you please provide us with some more details of this email? Are you able to save and attach the email as a PDF? By doing this, we would be able to assist in finding out whom this was sent by and what link, if any, they have to your account, so we may take the appropriate actions. I look forward to your response in order to further investigate this for you.
Kind regards”
I saved the email as a PDF and promptly replied to the customer service rep with the attachment.
Was it important to tell the company about this experience?
Absolutely yes! My email was shared with hundreds of other people I do not know and without my permission.
“Online services that expose your contact information put you at risk of increased future spamming by people as well as bots searching for email addresses,” said digital marketing expert Will Hanke of Red Canoe Media. “If the sender had used BCC, it would have kept your address private and that would help to prevent devious people who might use these addresses inappropriately.”
What a shame! The sender’s portfolio was really nice. Too bad he violated the privacy policy. The customer service rep said he will let me know the outcome. I’m curious to find out what happens.
