Saddle up for some electronic frontier style justice, buckaroos: There’s a varmint who needs a necktie party real bad, and it looks like the list industry is gonna have to “Cowboy up.”
The rascal’s name is Jason Smathers. Not setting off any bells? He’s the mangy cur who was recently hauled in for stealing and selling the names and e-mail addresses of AOL customers to those most dastardly of evildoers – spammers.
Legitimate authorities are already ahead of list folk on one account. Smathers, a former – oh, boy, is he ever former -- AOL employee, has been charged with stealing the names, and if convicted faces a $250,000 fine and up to five years jail time.
But the law can only try him for the theft. It falls to the list industry to punish him for an even-more-egregious offense – an astounding lack of marketing hoss sense.
Smathers allegedly stole 92 million online identities. Because many consumers have multiple online handles, the actual number of individuals affected is closer to around 30 million, according to USA Today.
Now, these were lists of e-mail names that had been kept up by the very company that was issuing them, so the chances are the file was extremely clean.
Furthermore, each e-mail address was linked to a phone number, ZIP code, and presence of a credit card, along with other data. (The actual credit card numbers were kept in a separate file.)
What did Smathers receive for these wonderful names? Try $100,000 from one Las Vegas spammer. I’ll spare you the math: That comes out to just under $1.01 per thousand names.
Checked the prices of e-mail lists recently? A halfway decent one will set you back at a cost of 150 times that. A buck-oh-one will barely cover handling charges. The appended data alone are probably worth $50 per thousand. At 92 million names, Smathers’ low price is going to have a material effect when the industry does its annual average cost-per name calculations.
In making these names available at such a low price, Smathers has devalued the names that legitimate members of the industry rent. And his actions have made this price very, very public.
And that is why, friends, I am calling for electronic frontier justice to be applied to this miscreant. I want to see his picture on a wanted poster in every Internet café in America. I am asking that his own e-mail address be appended, as a bonus name, to every e-mail list vended for the next decade. This man must never be able to open an e-mailbox without having his mortgage or his manhood called into question.
Do it for the list vendors.
To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact rlevey@primediabusiness.com
