GNC Halts Customer Data Leak
General Nutrition Centers last week halted the unauthorized sale of its loyalty-club members’ names after lists with thousands of GNC’s Gold Card members came up for sale on mailing list Web sites.
Apparently a handful of GNC suppliers collected Gold Card members’ data from product returns, then sold the information to mailing list brokers. One broker, MrHealthList.com, independently compiled a list of “a small portion of GNC’s customers” who returned products to third-party vendors and promoted the list as Gold Card members, per a GNC statement.
MrHealthList.com agreed to remove references to Gold Card members and will pull membership lists from its site. Meanwhile, GNC advises vendors not to release customer data that’s provided as verification of a product return.
GNC, Pittsburgh, doesn’t sell customer lists; its list manager Mokrynski & Associates handles (and GNC reviews) mailings to Gold Card members who opt-in for outside offers.
