The twice-bankrupt Air America is selling off all assets, including the email mailing list. Many more details are available over at Geek o System, including this bit from Air America’s privacy policy:

[1]e. The Air America site has a newsletter distributed via e-mail. If you choose to subscribe to this feature, you must provide a valid e-mail address. Your e-mail address will be used only by Air America for the distribution of the newsletter and any promotions or marketing that we feel may be of interest to you and will not be divulged to any third party, except as required by court order. All Air America newsletters include an unsubscribe link in at the very bottom. Clicking this link will unsubscribe you immediately.

…

4. What information does Air America share with third parties?

a. Unless described herein, Air America will not impart to third parties individual users’ e-mail addresses or other individual personal information unless required to do so by law.

Perhaps bankruptcy procedures mandate selling off private information in order to pay the creditors; the auction house has the emails listed under “intellectual property.” Most private individuals would disagree, but information like this is bought and sold all the time.

If nothing else, this should serve as a cautionary tale to everyone who gives out their information to any organization. Personally, I take great pleasure in giving out misinformation (e.g., something close to, but not quite, my real name with completely incorrect demographic information). I recently received a donation appeal (complete with an already-completed membership card) to the NAACP, as well as a complementary subscription to a magazine marketed to young African-American women. Yep, filled out one little online survey and suddenly I’m a young black woman on marketing lists across the nation.

Now that’s funny, I don’t care who y’are.

HT to Tweater UKnowIamRight.

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