And another perspective from the wall street journal:
Soon, AOL Users Will Get
Busy Signals -- and Junk Calls
By REBECCA QUICK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Welcome to the latest "member benefit" for customers
of America Online Inc.: phone calls from telemarketers
pitching products ranging from discount calling plans to
cheap appliances.
In a quiet move that could alienate customers and raise
privacy concerns, the on-line service will begin handing
over the home phone numbers of its 8.5 million
members to aggressive telemarketers such as CUC
International Inc.
In the past, AOL's "terms-of-service" agreement said it
could rent out its members' mail and electronic-mail
addresses to marketers, but members' phone numbers
were off limits. Now, a few telemarketers that reached
partnership agreements with AOL earlier this year --
about the same time the company suffered overloaded
phone lines and service outages -- will be privy to the
phone numbers as well.
Although AOL is calling the change in policy a "member
benefit" that will introduce useful products to its
customers, some members are less than enthusiastic.
"I'm horrified," says Robert Mitchell, a film producer
and lawyer in New York who has been an AOL
member for about a year. "It's bad enough to get junk
mail, but junk phone calls are much worse."
James Sahagian of Paramus, N.J., who has been an
AOL member for 2 1/2 years, says he already receives
at least half a dozen unsolicited e-mail messages each
day on the service. These junk e-mails -- ranging from
get-rich-quick schemes to adult-entertainment pitches --
don't bother him much, he says, because they can easily
be deleted.
But Mr. Sahagian, who gets about two to three
unsolicited calls a week at home right now, said he
would be "really annoyed" if more unwanted phone calls
were to start pouring in. "CUC is a huge company --
we're likely to get hounded by it," he says.
Although the changes were quietly added to the
terms-of-service contract, AOL now says it plans to
give subscribers plenty of notice, as well as information
on how to opt out, before the calls begin in the fall. How
this information will be handed out hasn't been
determined.
An AOL spokeswoman said the company only will
make its members' phone numbers available to
marketers with which it has entered broader agreements
and which it believes are beneficial to its members.
"I don't know why everyone's making such a big deal
about this -- AOL shouldn't be singled out," said Ed
Sanden, a senior vice president of CUC International in
Stamford, Conn. Daniel Borislow, chief executive
officer of Tel-Save Holdings Inc. in New Hope, Pa.,
another telemarketer that plans to use AOL member
numbers, agreed: "I don't think it's annoying at all,
because the customers are getting a real benefit" with
offers for low-cost long-distance service.
To be sure, telemarketers rent names and phone
numbers from subscriber lists all the time. But it's usually
done quietly.
"If a telemarketer told someone he'd gotten your phone
number from Cosmopolitan magazine, you'd feel a little
bit invaded personally," said Carl Fremont of
Wunderman Cato Johnson, a direct-marketing company
owned by Young & Rubicam Inc.
Moreover, the information AOL could gather about its
members is more in-depth than that available from most
other companies -- it potentially can record every place
its members go on-line.
Privacy experts say AOL will be under particular
scrutiny because of the leading role the Dulles, Va.,
company has taken in protecting on-line privacy.
"I would not be at all surprised to see a member
backlash, particularly because [AOL has] held
themselves out as being very forward-looking on
privacy," said Deirdre Mulligan of the Center for
Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group in
Washington that follows civil liberties on the Internet.
In its old terms-of-service agreement, AOL specifically
stated it would not supply members' phone numbers.
Because this is such a change from those earlier
conditions, AOL has an obligation to alert its members,
Ms. Mulligan contended. "They should be educating
their users of this as well as they advertised the change
to flat-rate fees" last year, she said. |
