Re: UKNM: Tell-a-friend

[will rowan]

Very good questions:


a)the person receiving the email have not consented to their

email address being recorded


It's ok to pass on information to a friend. The laterooms.com e mail

received by

the friend appears as 'sent by' you, not laterooms.com, ie less likely to be

seen as an unsolicited commercial e mail.

But it's not clear from the small print whether your friend's e mail address

is

also being captured:

The opt out copy is ok in principle (for countries such as the UK where opt

out

is acceptable), but it is below the 'send' button & not written to make it

easy

to opt out - a "check here if you don't want further offers" would be much

better:

"Information which you supply whilst using this website may be held in our

computer records.

                     It may be used to offer you new services (by post,

telephone, e-mail or fax) which we think might be of

                     interest to you.

                     If you do not want your information to be used for

marketing purposes please inform us in writing at:

                     LateRooms.com, 247 Chapel St, Manchester, M3 5EP, UK;

or by

email at

removelaterooms [dot] com

."


b)the email address could be personally

identifiable information


quite right in principle - the current uk data protection regs recognise

that

sensitive personl info - race, religion, etc can be implicit in an e mail

address. But if this is simply a communication between friends, I wouldn't

think

that applies. But if laterooms capture the frind's e mail address (or yours,

for

that matter) and they contain sensitive personal info, then appropriate

consents

are needed.


The frinedly lawyer with whom I occasionally work would, at this point, add

that

a) the data protection regulations weren't really conceived with email info

in

mind, so are stretched to fit, and b) it's a question of demonstrating

reasonable responsibility and assessing the risk.


Laterooms probably aren't doing anything wrong - but they could help

themselves

by being much clearer on what they actually do with e mail addresses.


Will

aajgraytalk21 [dot] com

 wrote:


> A tell-a-friend mechanism (like found at

> http://www.uk.laterooms.com/eaf.php3?lang=eng ) has been proposed for a

> client micro-site.  Client legal department has indicated that this cannot

> proceed as a)the person receiving the email have not consented to their

> email address being recorded and b)the email address could be personally

> identifiable information if it was something like

>

bob [dot] jonesbritishairways [dot] com, ie we know their name and where they work.

>

> I need to go back into battle on this one.  My understanding is that a

clear

> privacy statement at the point of data collection indicating that the

email

> address would be used for the purposes of recommending the site only is

> sufficient.  This could be combined with a similar statement on the

> recommendation email. (both as per DMA guidelines on electronic commerce)

>

> Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

>

> Regards,

>

> Andy Gray



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