Stupid, stupid, stupid... leave me alone!
Does no one read the small print anymore?

Recently I received an e-vite in my e-mail box. It’s an “electronic invitation” provided by Evite.com, for people who are too lazy to manage their own e-mail and marketing information. You see, this evite.com service will send out announcements and reminders for you to a specified list of recipients. What the user of evite.com’s services probably doesn’t know (unless they read the Privacy Policy statement) is that evite.com offers no privacy for the user or the user’s recipients. As a matter of fact, evite.com sells every ounce of the user and the user’s e-mail list information to third party data collection services.

That’s right, not only does this sneaky evite.com service track the user, but it tracks who the user sends e-vites to, and will track them as well. (This is clearly an invasion of privacy, but I guess they’ll just keep on doing it until someone gets pissed off enough.)

Don’t believe me?

Here’s a couple of tasty tidbits from the evite.com Privacy Policy statement:

...When you send messages to others through our service (e.g., an Evite invitation or a Reminder), we collect and retain the e-mail addresses or other pertinent contact information of those persons to whom you send the message... ...Some of your Data also may be shared with our business partners... ...Evite may disclose your Data, the contents of your private communications, or the contact information of your guests...
...It is possible that as we continue to develop our Web site and our business, Evite and/or related assets might be acquired. In such a transaction, customer information may be transferred to the acquiring entity... ...Evite works with third-party advertising companies to place banner ads on our site and in e-mail communications sent to our registered users and to recipients of invites... ...The third-party advertising companies also may read or set cookies on your hard drive, use pixel tags, track which ads you have viewed, or collect other information about you... ...Third parties who offer services, banner ads, or promotions through our site also may independently collect information about our registered users, visitors to our Web site and recipients of our communications through cookies, pixel tags, checkout pages, or otherwise, and may independently send communications to you. The privacy practices of advertisers and other companies who provide services or ads through our site are not covered by this privacy policy... ...While Evite does not give users the opportunity to remove their information from our database... [you can surf their site for hours with no hope of ever opting out.]

So, how much does that suck?

And if it’s not bad enough that I have to fight off these advertising companies like DoubleClick and LiveFluence, the organization that keeps sending me these annoying e-vites lists a return e-mail address that is nonexistent, and of course this lousy evite.com site actually states that they offer no facility for “opting-out” if one wishes not to receive these irritating, unsolicited e-vites. (Actually, they do, but the Mensa Society has been trying to figure it out for two years now, so good luck.)

Nice huh? Now you can’t even trust the people who just want to get their information to you in the easiest, practically cost-free, and least demanding way available, now made possible through the marvel of the Internet and a sleazy company called evite.com a subsidiary of Citysearch.com, wholly owned by TicketMaster. Figures.

Hope you enjoy this issue.

Scot Giambalvo