Ebates Spam
I use unique email addresses for most things that I sign up for, and can easily tell when my email address has been given/traded/sold/etc. away (and by whom). Overstock has done it twice, and now Ebates has as well. They suck!
UPDATE: Reader Lippy inquires as to whether their reserved the right to sell email addresses. The short answer, No. The long answer:
Their TOS include the following "relevant" paragraphs. I added the bolding.
DISCLOSURE OF ACCOUNT INFORMATION
22. You authorize Ebates to disclose to third parties information you have provided, or information that Ebates has obtained about your Ebates account or shopping behavior: (i) to agents of Ebates or its affiliates, such as independent auditors, consultants or attorneys; (ii) to comply with government agency or court orders or requests; (iii) in providing aggregated and non-personalized marketing services for an advertising or merchant partner, or (iv) where it is necessary for redemption or transfer of your cash back rewards. Further, you authorize Ebates to receive any account information from any Affiliate Merchant including, but not limited to information regarding the Qualified Purchase such as the products ordered, the order number, the time and date the Qualified Purchase occurred, the email address entered for the Qualified Purchase. You agree to hold the Affiliated Merchant harmless for any information disclosed to Ebates. If you choose to download the Moe Money Maker™, you allow Ebates to collect, use and sell non- personalized marketing information regarding your visits and purchases to internet commerce sites.
23. By signing up for membership at Ebates, you agree to let us email you shopping-related emails as well as communications related to your account administration (e.g. that we've added money to your account, that we are mailing you a check on a certain date, etc). You can opt-out to any or all of our marketing emails. We send three different types of shopping-related emails: The Savings Newsletter, Bonus Offers, and Specials and Coupons. Each of these can be unsubscribed to separately, or you can unsubscribe to all our promotional emails in one step. Just head to your account page and hit the 'click here to edit your profile' link and you'll see all the options. Alternatively, you can unsubscribe to any or all promotional mailings by following the unsubscribe link on any of these emails. Since we need to communicate account information with you in order to run your account, you can't unsubscribe from account information emails. But rest assured that we don't send account emails unnecessarily. These are not promotional emails, and are only used to notify you that a check is on the way, that we put money in your account, that we need a mailing address to send your check to, that we mailed you a check and it returned to us as having a bad address, and so forth. If you don't wish to ever hear from us, even if just to hear that we tracked your purchase and awarded you a cash back reward, you can close down your account by contacting customer service. But frankly we'll be quite offended.
Comments
Does it say that they will never sell your address?
Posted by: Rook Score | June 17, 2005 1:02 PM
I've updated my post to respond to your question.
Posted by: $uperman | June 17, 2005 1:08 PM
Hi,
Please refrain from inferring that we here @ ebates sell your email address to outside marketing agencies. We do not, and never have. If you sign up at ebates, your email stays at ebates. We will supply informaiton only to provide you with a rebate.
For example, to match up an order from a particular merchant, we may need to send that merchant your email. But we do not authorize anyone to email you nor would we ever sell your email address to anyone so that they could advertise to you. Never happened!
Thanks for listening,
Alessandro Isolani
President and CEO
Ebates.com
Posted by: Alessandro | December 15, 2005 5:43 PM
Alessandro, I find your comments funny. How would spam get sent to a unique address that was only shared with Ebates?
Posted by: $uperman | December 16, 2005 11:26 AM