Affiliates can no longer sell customer's info to financial institutions

[David Tan]

Affiliates beware. Selling leads/info to third parties is illegal [ittoolbox.com]

Basically, it says that if a site visitor/customer submits info through an affiliate to the merchant, that info cannot be used by financial institutions to make a solicitation to a consumer.

To make it even more layman, when I fill in a form in the affiliate's site which goes to the merchant, and that dumb dumb affiliate sells the info to a credit card company, I better not be receiving a phone call from a telemarketer asking me to sign-up for that credit card. There better be an option for me to flat deny an affiliate's request to sell my info to the credit card company or whatever bloodsuckers you're trying to pawn it too. If you didn't make it clear to me with a straighforward way to shove that request down your throat, don't even think about it.

Hmmm, can you imagine how much money some affiliates make selling customer's info to telemarketers and financial institutions? Kinda like reselling the leads to multiply income.

[Gajandra D]

I would be wary of any affiliate asking me for personal info. Simply because there are so many companies out there willing to purchase your info such as preferences, shopping habits, favorite brands and credit standing. All this information should never be shared with fishy sites. Basically do not give up your data unless you absolutely have to. Even survey sites are to be throughly checked out before you submit any info. There are several tiers of this mailing lists that exchange hands several times between spammers and other offline pests waiting to call and make life miserable for you.

[Tephus]

Anonymous surveys are OK. But filling up phone numbers I won't do.

[David Tan]

Which gets me wondering how many people have throwaway email accounts. You know, the ones you submit in surveys, competitions, online forms, to make enquiries...etc.

Since it's free, when it gets to spammed, just start a new throwaway email account.