rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) (11/26/90)
Lotus Development Corporation has a new product due out in 1991, called
"Household Marketplace." It's a database on CDROM. It has the estimated
income and a profile of the buying habits of 120 million US residents.
That's a high percentage of the US population -- the odds are pretty good
that YOU are in the Lotus database.
A Lotus spokesman has said that the company is concerned about privacy
issues, so to help prevent misuse of the data only legitimate businesses
can get the disk. With easy access to a laser printer, a POBox, and/or a
fax machine, however, it is hard to see how Lotus can determine the
legitimacy of anyone, however, and I'm sure that with minor effort almost
anyone will be able to purchase Marketplace. The cost, by the way, is
under $1000 with quarterly updates available.
The database does not contain any of the data covered by the Fair Credit
Practices Act so Lotus is under no legal obligation to let you see what
they are saying about you. In fact, during interviews they have said that
there is NO WAY for an individual to review their personal data, nor are
there any provisions to make corrections on what is recorded.
Lotus will remove anyone from their database who writes to them.
Send a letter to:
Lotus Development Corp.
Attn: Market Name Referral Service
55 Cambridge Parkway
Cambridge, MA 02142philip@beeblebrox.dle.dg.com (Philip Gladstone) (12/04/90)
In article <9011261357.AA28287@litchi.bbn.com> rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
rsalz> The database does not contain any of the data covered by the Fair Credit
rsalz> Practices Act so Lotus is under no legal obligation to let you see what
rsalz> they are saying about you. In fact, during interviews they have said that
rsalz> there is NO WAY for an individual to review their personal data, nor are
rsalz> there any provisions to make corrections on what is recorded.
This raises some *extremely* interesting legal issues. If Lotus bring
one copy of this database into the UK, then every US citizen is
entitled (under the terms of the [UK] Data Protection Act 1984) to
a) be supplied by Lotus with a copy of the information constituting
any personal data held by Lotus
b) rectification of any data held by Lotus if found to be inaccurate
c) compensation due to any inaccuracy
d) compensation due to unauthorised disclosure
etc etc. [My reading of the act]
There is some doubt as to the last two categories as to *who* could be
sued for compensation. There is a reading of the Act that says that
Lotus would be liable for inaccuracy, but not for the disclosure.
Note that most European countries have Data Protection Legislation of
some sort (some rather stricter than that of the UK).
There is one drawback to hoping that Lotus might take a disk into the
UK -- the whole database might be illegal in the first place!
--
Philip Gladstone Dev Lab Europe, Data General, Cambridge, UK
Listen three eyes, don't you try and outweird me, I get
stranger things that you free with my breakfast cereal.