Lockdown

It was interesting to see how the blogosphere was "alive" with chatter about the posts yesterday regarding the marriage amendment CD. For a time it was #1 on Slashdot (someone who wanted to get his traffic numbers up lifted parts of the post off this site, put it on his, and then put a message on Slashdot with a link to the "article" on his site. That's just paisley-and-stripes lame. Tons of responses there, lots of folks commenting on what the article said -- its merits and flaws. Only problem is, very few actually read the original posts here and were operating in relative ignorance. Intead, they relied on what some blog said some blog said about the post. As much as the exercise revealed about privacy concerns, for me it revealed how quickly and effectively reposting a blog's information (deleting somet things, and editing ot others) can spread misinformation. Sometimes it's just carelessness. But it's a lesson learned and I hope readers of blogs will remind themselves that unless they're reading the original post on the original blog site, they may be reading garbage.

Now then. The company responsible is CH Consulting. And if you're interested, they've published an article about database marketing and how it works.

The data we referred to was available on CH Consulting's Web site, by virtue of a link off the main site to viewyouriq.com talks about what kind of value they bring to political campaigns. It's now not accessible, but Google Cache can show you the page.

The theory behind the CD is exemplified by the company's product, ProCard, a significant feature of which is its ability to get around the do-not-call rules that have hampered telemarketers. CH cites IQ Central on its Web site, which gives a glimpse into the appeal of accessing the gathered data. However, keep in mind that political organizations -- and non-profits -- are exempt from Minnesota's Do Not Call rule.

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In terms of a product however, Christa Heibel, the executive at CH, also has written about the effect of the Do Not Call laws and how to get around them.

Remember, it's OK to call someone if your company has an existing prior relationship. How that relationship is built will be the difference for many firms seeking to return to telemarketing.

So you run the program, and you transmit your data, and you establish a relationship.

ProCard lets a company present their sales material to prospective clients on a CD. The CD can be loaded with multiple-choice personal data questions to gather information on the viewer, as well as tracks where and what was done with the CD.

I can't recall, by the way, if I mentioned this earlier but there is a Terms of Use on this CD, one to which you must agree in order to get it to function. However, the contents are for the protection of the vendor (no decompiling, reservation of copyright etc., and a mention that the user is responsible for any damage caused by any downloads as a result of running the program). There is no mention of data collection and transmission. There was, I'm told, no mention of it at the news conference unveiling the CD on Monday either.