STATEMENT-STUFFER USERS should check which flag their prospects salute: If it has a maple leaf on it, those inserts could mean trouble.
In Canada, even inserts are considered invasions of privacy if personal information provided for non-marketing purposes was used to get them into consumers’ hands.
That became clear in July when Canada’s privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart ruled that a bank sent inserts using data provided to administer accounts. Stoddart recommended that the bank allow customers to opt out of receiving statement stuffers.
And now observers are wondering if that requirement will trickle down to the United States. It well could, since U.S. legislators are moving to curtail data use without understanding the impact of what they’re doing, according to Marty Abrams, executive director of the Hunton & Williams Center for Information Policy in Atlanta.
That was just one of the threats covered in a September Webinar titled
Network
