TiVo Spam Mixup

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TiVo Spam Mixup

Several members of the TiVo Community Forum complained about emails from Nissan at email addresses they shared only with TiVo:

Is TiVo "sharing" email addresses?
Today I received an advertising email message from Nissan -- sent to my TiVo email address. Nobody except for TiVo has this email address.

Nissan email, any else getting them?
Within the last month I have received 2 emails from Nissan (actually from Digital Impact for Nissan) sent to my tivo@domain.com email address. There is no way I would have subscribed to Nissan with my tivo address.

TiVo's response to them is that someone using their TiVo had requested more information from a Nissan "gold star" ad, which jives with section 3.5 of TiVo's privacy policy.

I found all this after getting an email from Nissan about a sweepstakes at an address I use only for TiVo and trying to find out if this had happened to any other TiVo users. I didn't remember asking for any information from Nissan via my TiVo and was afraid that my email address had been sold.

What had actually happend is I had not been checking my TiVo-specific address between May and November and during that time TiVo had run an offer for a free Nissan 350Z DVD and I thought Free car DVD? Why not? While I'm not sure what happened to the DVD, Nissan decided to add me to their mailing list and when I got an email from them I freaked a bit to be getting commercial email I wasn't expecting from a big name on my TiVo address.

I would have two suggestions to TiVo and other companies that want to avoid freaking me out: First, make sure that when your customers ask for more information about a specific product they don't automatically get added to mailing lists too (even if it's a "partner"). Second, include how you acquired an email address in the bottom of the email so we forgetful-types have a gentle reminder.

by George Hotelling December 6, 2004 in TiVo