We create accounts for our users for several reasons:

1. We need to complete a round trip email to verify the user.
2. With a consumer account, the consumer can come back to the site and add new titles to their mail preference choices and monitor the status of their previous requests. This is why we “retain” the names - it is all in the name of providing excellent customer service.
3. By storing the names, we can provide the merchant’s portion of the Member list at any time, in machine readable form so that it seamlessly integrates into the merge-purge process. We only give the names to the merchants that have opted out of their titles. Without storing the names, we could not provide the service to the merchants.
4. By storing the names, we can transmit them to merchants in a secure manner.

Our privacy policy is that we do not release the names to any organization that the member has not set a mail preference for.

What Donn and the DMA wanted was for us to stop having consumers register at our site and simply provide a link to their site. As you can read throughout this blog, consumers don’t want this approach.

I hope this answers your question about the name issue. Feel free to contact me at chuck (at) catalogchoice.org if you would like to discuss this further.

Chuck

The DMA’s position is that it is not telling its members not to participate with Catalog Choice, said Donn Rappaport,
chairman and CEO of the American List Counsel Inc. and chairman of the DMA Board of Directors. However, the DMA is
advising its members to ask Catalog Choice some very important questions before deciding to work with its service. For
example, he asked, why does Catalog Choice insist on retaining the names of people who have signed up for the service?
Rappaport said that the DMA had met with Catalog Choice to talk about ways that the two organizations could work
together, but discussions broke down over this issue.

CC.org: you’ve been online a year? I don’t believe for a minute you have sold lists. So far this month two unwanted catalogs. It’s taken DMA 36 years to create part of this mess as they provide our mailing info to a variety of mail suppliers other than catalogs and do not take responsibility. I still won’t join DMA they are not reliable and do not care about the consumer per their letter. They care about $$$$ and not the ever growing delicate environment.
CC:org, you need to go National news to get that 1 Million mark.

Joe, Thank you for reading the DMA letter, I got the same impression as well.

I’m not employed with CC.org just a concerned consumer. DMA is just on a smut campaign afraid to lose their control on the consumers desires - the ones that really count.