Edit: My comment below was based on a faulty understanding of how EDDM mailers worked and a faulty assumption I based on that ignorance. What they did in reality is little more than sending out spam mail, it was not a privacy violation.
Purely from a privacy standpoint, however, there has never been an indication they have violated users’ trust in that regard.
In regards to the mailers, they messed up and passed blame,
In this process, our EDDM vendor made a significant mistake by not excluding names, but instead including names before addresses, resulting in the distribution of personalized mailers.
I hope you consider a customer list leak to be a breach of privacy. And seeing how they didn’t take responsibility but tried to pass blame, they didn’t take such a mistake very seriously or respond in a manner that instills further trust.
It once again pains me slightly to be defending this company, as I really do not want people to ignore their questionable business practices when evaluating their trust in them. With that said though, it is important to present correct facts:
Using the EDDM service provided by the USPS that allows blanket mailing of every house within an entire ZIP code does not constitute a “customer list leak.” This is just targeted spam mailing to a ZIP location; Brave don’t even know who they’re sending the mail to. Most likely aren’t Brave users and probably don’t even know about the company, which is the entire point of sending them spam mail I guess.
Your message makes it sound like Brave acquired and printed the names and addresses of Brave customers to send them mail, constituting a leak of their customer list. They didn’t.
I think you may be right actually. When I read this
In this process, our EDDM vendor made a significant mistake by not excluding names, but instead including names before addresses, resulting in the distribution of personalized mailers.
from their statement, I made an assumption because I didn’t look at how EDDM works. The way I read “not excluding names, but instead including names” was: We sent a list of names to the vendor; the vendor was supposed to exclude those names, and mail to everyone else in the ZIP, but instead, they mailed to only those names. It seems that’s not an accurate understanding of the situation. I think the correct reading is: we said “no names” on our EDDM mailers but they acted as if we said “yes names” on our EDDM mailers.
From my original interpretation, that is essentially a customer list leak, or at least a ‘localized’ customer list leak, especially for anyone in a shared living environment where someone else may see the name printed on a Brave mailer and learn that that person is a Brave user.
Thanks for clearing it up though. Let me try to go back and edit a few previous comments where I’ve said this to clarify.
Edit: My comment below was based on a faulty understanding of how EDDM mailers worked and a faulty assumption I based on that ignorance. What they did in reality is little more than sending out spam mail, it was not a privacy violation.
That’s simply not true though.
They have sent out direct mailers that basically equated to a customer list leak.
In regards to the mailers, they messed up and passed blame,
I hope you consider a customer list leak to be a breach of privacy. And seeing how they didn’t take responsibility but tried to pass blame, they didn’t take such a mistake very seriously or respond in a manner that instills further trust.
It once again pains me slightly to be defending this company, as I really do not want people to ignore their questionable business practices when evaluating their trust in them. With that said though, it is important to present correct facts:
Using the EDDM service provided by the USPS that allows blanket mailing of every house within an entire ZIP code does not constitute a “customer list leak.” This is just targeted spam mailing to a ZIP location; Brave don’t even know who they’re sending the mail to. Most likely aren’t Brave users and probably don’t even know about the company, which is the entire point of sending them spam mail I guess.
Your message makes it sound like Brave acquired and printed the names and addresses of Brave customers to send them mail, constituting a leak of their customer list. They didn’t.
I think you may be right actually. When I read this
from their statement, I made an assumption because I didn’t look at how EDDM works. The way I read “not excluding names, but instead including names” was: We sent a list of names to the vendor; the vendor was supposed to exclude those names, and mail to everyone else in the ZIP, but instead, they mailed to only those names. It seems that’s not an accurate understanding of the situation. I think the correct reading is: we said “no names” on our EDDM mailers but they acted as if we said “yes names” on our EDDM mailers.
From my original interpretation, that is essentially a customer list leak, or at least a ‘localized’ customer list leak, especially for anyone in a shared living environment where someone else may see the name printed on a Brave mailer and learn that that person is a Brave user.
Thanks for clearing it up though. Let me try to go back and edit a few previous comments where I’ve said this to clarify.