Pathfinder 1E Has Paizo been selling my address?

[BryonD]

Paizo Publishing, LLC® did not sell the Dragon or Dungeon subscriber lists for this direct mailer. Folks here in the office received it as well and we haven't been subscribers for ages (it's free!) or even at all. I repeat: this was not a Paizo Publishing mailer. We did not sell the subscriber lists for this mailer. Paizo has great respect for the privacy of our customers--if you've selected to opt-out of messages from our marketing partners we honor that request.

Yours Truly,

I'm 100% certain that through some route my address on the mailer came through my Dragon subscription.
However, I've had that subscription for a while and it may very well pre-date Paizo's existence.

 

[Piratecat]

Paizo Publishing, LLC® did not sell the Dragon or Dungeon subscriber lists for this direct mailer. Folks here in the office received it as well and we haven't been subscribers for ages (it's free!) or even at all. I repeat: this was not a Paizo Publishing mailer. We did not sell the subscriber lists for this mailer. Paizo has great respect for the privacy of our customers--if you've selected to opt-out of messages from our marketing partners we honor that request.

Joshua, thank you very much for checking in and letting us know.

Here's a question; could it be a RPGA/WotC mailing list, from back when Dragon and Dungeon were owned by Wizards of the Coast?

 

[JoshuaFrost]

Joshua, thank you very much for checking in and letting us know.

Here's a question; could it be a RPGA/WotC mailing list, from back when Dragon and Dungeon were owned by Wizards of the Coast?

To be clear: Dragon and Dungeon are still owned by WotC. Paizo publishes them under license from WotC.

I will make no speculations as to where/why/how this list came into existance and why any of you are on it (or any of us for that matter). I wanted to clarify that we didn't sell our lists for this mailer.

Cheers,

 

[JustKim]

Here's a question; could it be a RPGA/WotC mailing list, from back when Dragon and Dungeon were owned by Wizards of the Coast?

That would also make sense in my case, because I've been a Dragon subscriber for years and years. I was living at my current address for a couple of years before Paizo took over. But as I've said and Bryon has attested, it's not a question of if Dragon's subscriber list was used for this mailer. It's provable that it was.

 

[diaglo]

Joshua, thank you very much for checking in and letting us know.

Here's a question; could it be a RPGA/WotC mailing list, from back when Dragon and Dungeon were owned by Wizards of the Coast?

i still didn't get the ad. and i belong to a lot of mail lists, subscriptions, message boards, online stores, etc...

i'm feeling left out.

can someone post a scan for me? please. pretty please with dice on top.

 

[Soel]

So you buy all your perscription drugs online, order women over the net, obtain virility-improving products via e-mail and arrange for breast- and penis enlargement surgery over the world wide web?

How is it not a good idea to do these all online? Especially if its cheap, and the sender has a name like John Minotaur!

Seriously, spam mail is good, without it we wouldn't have this site - http://www.419eater.com/

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Us gamers are always telling those who put us down or make fun of us that we are better that their perception of us, yet we go on rants about something a trivial as unwanted mail, etc., not to mention jumping to conclusions about who may have sent it to us or what laws they broke.

What makes you think this is something restricted to gamers?

Why shouldn't I be upset if an advertiser is breaking the law to target me? Do you think it's okay to flaunt the law? We put the law in place because we perceived unwanted advertisements to be a problem. And it wasn't gamers who wrote that legislation.

When the time comes to really complain about something important, it won't matter, because we've watered down the real complains by complaining about the trivial ones.

Actually, no. Real complaints go to the appropriate elected officials. If I have a problem with people being denied their rights, I write to my MPP and to lobby groups, and I donate money to advocacy organizations. Trivial things that I take offense to go on internet message boards.

Disdain and offence are not binary, on-or-off dispositions. Just because I am offended by something doesn't mean that the world should stop turning to satisfy me. But I will express my dislike for dirty business practices until those practices stop, because I feel obliged to voice my complaints rather than simply let dirty businessmen go about their dirty business unchallenged.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

In the United States, if you wish to not receive direct marketing material (commonly referred to as junk mail) you need to be active instead of passive. The Direct Marketing Association has a Mail Preference Service that allows you to be removed from the mailing lists of members of the DMA. DMA members must abide by this, and other marketers are encouraged to follow it as well. Check out http://www.the-dma.org/cgi/offmailinglist in order to do this. Unless you take an active stance, a company can, and often will, let associate companies know you are potentially interested in their products. After all, you would not have purchased the original product if you were not interested in it.

You can also use the words Direct Marketing Opt-Out or Mailing List Removal in your favorite search engine to find out other ways of being removed from direct marketing lists.

Hey, great! I'm glad to see that there's a US parallel to the CMA I might be able to register with. Thanks for the info.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

That would also make sense in my case, because I've been a Dragon subscriber for years and years. I was living at my current address for a couple of years before Paizo took over. But as I've said and Bryon has attested, it's not a question of if Dragon's subscriber list was used for this mailer. It's provable that it was.

I moved to my current location before I subscribed, and I haven't signed up for RPGA or anything like that since I moved. If ByronD is getting his mailers because he's a Dragon subscriber, it stands to reason that this is the likely reason that I am receiving them. Can the Paizo staff explain ByronD's info?

edit:

Also, thanks to Joshua for actually looking into this. I appreciate the gesture. If you do happen to figure out where the information is coming from, please pass it on. So far, I have to wonder if someone might have sold the subscriber database without permission.

edit2:

If Dungeon and Dragon are still owned by WotC, I wonder, do they still own the right to look at the subscription database? If they do, that might explain it. Paizo's policy of not sharing data without permision could be circumvented because the owner of the data has agreed to no such thing.

 

[IcyCool]

Whenever I sign up for subscription or even something online, there is usually a "Business" field, or a second "address" line. I put something into those fields that identifies what I am signing up for. Then I make sure to check the opt outs and not check any opt-ins. For the most part, I don't get alot of junk mail. But when I get a piece of junk mail that contains that information, the company who's service I signed up for gets a strongly worded email/phone call/letter, and then they lose my business. Sure, they respond to me with apologies, outright hostility, or insist they didn't do it, but at that point, their word means jack-all. And really, the thing they don't seem to realize is that they are selling a luxury product. They don't get to abuse their customers and expect them to stay.