No Privacy Ever Again?

So it was announced this week that your phone records and emails are being looked at by the government.

Am I surprised?

Not at all. Anybody who owns a landline phone knows that for many years the phone company has been keeping track of every long distance call you make, displaying on your bill the number you called and when you called it. It may not seem like much information, but what else were they getting as well over all these years?

While the government is having their fun, Staples is having their own fun collecting and storing data about its customers that it should NOT be entitled to.

So here’s the story:

About a year and half ago in this very blog, I wrote that my mother made a purchase on her charge card at an out-of-state Staples store. She did NOT have a rewards card during the transaction nor was one indicated on the receipt.

A couple of days later, I received an email from Staples wanting me to review the product that my mother had purchased. So how did Staples get my email address without a rewards card? Let’s look at the facts:

· The charge card was NEVER linked to a rewards card even though I had one in the past but it hadn’t been used for over 3 years. Granted the charge card number was the same as mine, the name on the card was not the same.

· My original rewards card was deactivated when I got the employee’s version of the card. The employee one should have been deactivated when I was terminated. So I should not have had any card whatsoever with them.

So was Staples storing old information about my credit card and linking it to a deactivated card, which still had my current email address attached to it?

It seems that they did and after filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, Staples could not explain to me why they were doing this. After going back and forth 4 times with the BBB as 3^rd party, the case was closed by the BBB with no solution to this problem. You can read about this complaint and the back and forth conversation by searching BBB in this blog.

Certainly Staples had NO legal right to store my credit card number, much less link it to a rewards card’s email address without my permission. Sadly, Staples is breaking many laws regarding credit card retention and should be investigated for this.

However, given that the government is doing its own tracking of people, it is highly doubtful that companies like Staples will ever be investigated for their improper behavior.

Since I have rewards cards to other stores that I still use with this same charge card, it seems that no other retailer has performed the underhanded tricks that Staples has done.

If we can’t trust the government, internet service providers, and Staples, then who can we trust? The answer seems to be nobody, nobody at all.