Spam from "GSN" to e-mail address registered on Play.com

halfer

I don't think it was play.com's CEO joining - just a spokesperson. Hopefully they'll pipe up soon :hello:

GustyGardenGalaxy

I wouldn't hold your breath.

halfer

Hmm, I do wonder. Just received this useless missive from the [EMAIL="privacy@play.com"]privacy@play.com[/EMAIL] address:

Thank you for your email.



We are sorry to learn of any concerns you may have in regards to the
safety of your personal information. An email has been dispatched to
you which should answer any of these concerns.



If you have any further queries please consult the FAQ section of our
Help pages. Alternatively you can contact our Customer Support Team on
0845 800 1020 (UK only) or +44 (0)1534 877 595 (outside UK). Our
opening hours are 9am - 8pm Monday to Friday and 9am - 5pm Saturday
and Sunday.



We hope you find this information reassuring and useful.



Kind Regards,

Customer Support Team
Play.com

I am further inclined to agree with the suggestion, earlier in this thread, that customer service teams are - in large orgs at least - not empowered to be of useful assistance.

Either that, or play.com employ large teams of monkeys on all-the-bananas-you-can-eat contracts, all typing randomly into computers. For each customer email received, they then use special software to select replies that most resemble English. All automatic, low-cost, and doesn't violate minimum wage laws - but not very useful.

Needless to say:

• My point about not having received an email about this leak was not addressed;
• My question about allowing customers to remove their own credit card details wasn't answered.

Bah! :wall:

GustyGardenGalaxy

The problem is that it's a generic letter - they are not addressing individual questions (I still have yet to receive a reply to my two emails).

halfer

Yeah, if they leaked details of all 8m customers, I guess individual, engraved, hand-delivered replies in calligraphy are probably out of the question, then?

Redcase

GustyGardenGalaxy wrote: »

A CEO joining a forum to answer questions? Hah - no such luck!

That single message from the play.com poster was only put here to try and shut us up.

Message to play.com: it didn't work!

I was being cheeky ,thats what the wee wink was for.;)

I emailed them to ask for my credit card to be optional,no email back yet .Straight questions must be hard for them to answer.

Impet_Limpet

I got the spam email, but no apology statements from play as have been mentioned.

So if I wasn't on here I wouldn't even have got the email suggesting I check my account and change my passwords.

Cybergeek

According to a Business Computing World news item today the Information Commissioner has not been notified of the data breach by Play.com - see http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/data-breach-strikes-play-com/

capate

Cybergeek wrote: »

According to a Business Computing World news item today the Information Commissioner has not been notified of the data breach by Play.com - see http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/data-breach-strikes-play-com/

The article to which you link refers to the UK ICO.

Play.com are based in Jersey and “...complies with the Data Protection (Jersey) Law of 2005 relating to the personal information you supply online...”

However, the Jersey Office of the Data Protection Commissioner is apparently in contact with the UK ICO and are working together on this case to ensure a full investigation takes place.

j2g

Being from the evil wold of marketing myself i can speculate on the sort of data that may have been exposed. Marketing organisations like Silverpop are only interest in holding data they can utilise in email marketing, like first name, last name for personalisation and email address for sending the message. Postcode possibly; maybe country or region. They may even hold some aggregated order history - like last order date, total spend, average order value etc... but anything else is useless to them and data storage is expensive, not gonna waste money on holding stuff they don't need.

Credit Card or Password data is not going to be held in a marketing database and wont have been exposed in this instance.

Does this mean you should not be concerned? No, of course you should. And whats more is that Play.com is just one of Silverpops customers
- others companies customers could be at risk too.

The reason that some would have got the spam email and not the CEO's follow-ups is that to send you a follow-up you must be opted in. If you are opted out your email address may have been in the database - but flagged as opted out. This means your address got compromised, but it would have been against certain guidelines for Play.com to email you about it. (odd i know, especially about this sort of thing - but emailing optouts would lead to further hot water) The thinking goes something like this.

1. We don't email users who have opted out because thats what spammers do.
2. Our data got compromised by spammers who spammed our entire database.
3. We want to notify every one who got spammed and apologies (which would be a "spam" email).
4. But to do so would make us as bad as the spammers... argh.
5. Lets just email everyone we can and hope for the best. Two wrongs don't make a right... etc..

Hope this helps put some peoples minds at rest... or maybe just confuses people.