To prove how much we respect your privacy, we'll spam you using your personal information leaked from a competitor

Techdirt often discusses interesting privacy stories. This one is pure gold:

Techdirt:We're Spamming You To Tell You How Much We Respect Your Privacy:
Contributed by Mike on Wednesday, October 26th, 2005 @ 11:22AM
from the who-comes-out-looking-worse? dept.

Yesterday there was the story of a startup that sent a marketing message that revealed all the email addresses of people on their list. While the company blamed it on a 'technical error' rather than the very human error that it was, they also insisted that the addresses were 'secure' despite not being able to really promise that. As if to drive that fact home, a competitor has now spammed the entire list, childishly claiming that they would do a better job 'respecting your privacy.' Of course, as theRegister points out, if that were true, they wouldn't have gone out and spammed that whole list, would they? In this case, both firms come out looking bad. The first one for not admitting how badly they screwed up, and the second one for exploiting the situation. "

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