Dad Gets OfficeMax Mail Addressed 'Daughter Killed in Car Crash'

[Hissyspit]

Source: Los Angeles Times

Dad gets OfficeMax mail addressed 'Daughter Killed in Car Crash'

BY MATT PEARCE
January 19, 2014, 8:34 p.m.
An off-and-on customer of OfficeMax, Mike Seay has gotten the office supply company's junk mail for years. But the mail that the grieving Lindenhurst, Ill., father said he got from OfficeMax last week was different.

It was addressed to "Mike Seay, Daughter Killed in Car Crash."

- snip -

Seay, who is unemployed, said that he isn't interested in suing OfficeMax, but that since his wife was "traumatized" by the letter, he wants an apology from the company's chief executive.

He also wants to know how OfficeMax got the information. The last thing Seay remembers buying at OfficeMax since his daughter's death last February is some paper.

"Why do they have that?" Seay said of the information about his daughter's death. "What do they need that for? How she died, when she died? It’s not really personal, but looking at them, it is. That’s not something they would ever need."

The nation has recently been riveted by the debate over how Americans' personal data is gathered by government agencies, and corporate data-mining has drawn concern as well.

Read more: http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-78961735/

[Ash_F]

1. Weird, obnoxious and crass.

All at once!

[JI7]

2. i don't understand this, even if they have the info why did they put that in the mail ?

and didn't office max go out of business ?

[Demeter]

6. No. It didn't.

Not yet, anyway. Maybe Office Depot? I think they merged.

[trof]

14. Staples bought Office Depot, I think.

[Ash_F]

25. Copy paste error likely

Or someone input the info the in the wrong field

[Skittles]

3. sickening and inhumane

awful

[shenmue]

4. Good Lord

That's so sad.

[MADem]

5. Third party (contracted) data collector...

In a statement, OfficeMax said the mailing "is a result of a mailing list rented through a third-party provider" and offered its apologies to Seay. A spokeswoman told The Times on Sunday that the company was still gathering information about what had happened.

I would wonder if the company collected details to cull certain names off of certain lists, e.g. they wouldn't want to rent this guy's name to a car company touting affordable cars for parents to buy their teen/young adult children. It seems to me that this sort of annotation is suggestive of that.

My (dead, many of them) family pets get a lot of mail offering them strange things--everything from credit cards to cruises! That's because I put their names on most stuff when some jerk demands information from me. Same deal when a sales clerk will ask for a frigging ZIP code, my answer is always 90210.

[Tanuki]

8. I think you are right about it being a bought data list.

When I bought my house, I started getting a few "new baby" mailings and free samples of baby products. I figured I must have landed on some new baby instead of new homeowner marketing database. But it is truly horrifying to think someone would have a tragedy-based marketing database.

[NBachers]

11. Ah, it's the old "Rogue third-party mailing list provider" dodge

Ha ha, I'm sure you'll agree, we have absolutely no responsibility in this, you see.

[valerief]

20. So this contractor sent out the mailing on behalf of OfficeMax. Therefore, OfficeMax is responsible.

It doesn't matter if they didn't know. They should have known, and that's enough.

BTW, I do EXACTLY the same thing when asked for a ZIP. It's always 90210. If the clerk doesn't want to enter it, I tell them to pick whatever ZIP they want, that it doesn't matter to me. When they try to explain why they need it, I cut them off--nicely, laugh, and tell them it's not my problem--and not theirs either--so they should just put in 90210.

[TBF]

7. The data mining in this country is out of control -

both the government and corporations should not be allowed to do this. We USED to have some notion of privacy in this country.

[onehandle]

9. Things like this will become more common as Google and Amazon sell our lives to third parties. nt

[jsr]

10. +1

[Dustlawyer]

12. I sent my Costa Sunglasses in for warranty repair, now I have Costa ads on EVERY Internet

page I go to. It doesn't make me want to buy more, that's for sure!

[TheBlackAdder]

13. If your homepage is Google, If you searched Costa's site from them, or used GMail to contact them...

Google will have your information and then present that on most sites, and via ad networks.

FB does the same thing.

===

I've even seen some targeted ads here, based on what posts or articles I've clicked on.

[mwooldri]

15. Exactly... those targeted ads... not very effective.

So I go on Google and search something like "Frigidaire <model#> rear bearing belt" and I get some desirable results - namely companies that would stock some parts I would need to repair my dryer. So I visit them, and until I do a cookie reset... I get lots of ads from the same or competitor company advertising washing machine and dryer parts.

If it's a Google ad, and I went on Google to search for it, or I open up gmail and read an email from a supplier... bingo... more adverts.

It really makes you want to place advert blockers on your browser... but Google isn't fond of that so it's not that easy for Chrome users.

[mountain grammy]

16. Here as in DU? Can you tell us more about that please?

[TheBlackAdder]

18. These were on the main page. Replaced by invasive Video game & anti-virus ads.

The main page would have ads that were content based, dependent on what I clicked on in this site and in other sites. This might have something to do with the search bar being a Google -search this site function, when I would search on things, I would get directly marketed. I stopped using the search tool here.


Now, I'm getting ads that on certain mouseovers open a second window, regarding some war video game and an anti-virus scanning one.

[mountain grammy]

21. I've never noticed a connection between DU and the ads targeting me.

That said, there are so many I wonder if I would even notice.

[Jackpine Radical]

26. Your little yellow star is a magic talisman

that wards off intrusive ads. That's why you don't see them.

[dickthegrouch]

23. Give DU a donation and all the ads stop

But DU does use google analytics too, so every page you look at is being reported to Google

[louis-t]

24. I looked at cowboy boots online over a year ago.

The ads still show up on DU from time to time.

[Skittles]

29. which is why I do fake searches for a variety of stuff!

their profile on me is VERY OFF THE MARK!!!

[jsr]

17. Disable Google+ and use Startpage.com for searches

And if you have Firefox, install the Adblock Edge add-on.

[TheBlackAdder]

19. DU uses the Google search tool to search this site's posts.

It's getting to the point where I need the Firefox ad blocker. Thanks.

I haven't really had a problem, until recently with this site and Raw Story.

===

Installed ADBlock Plus 2.4.1. I had already installed AD Block 1.0.0 before.

[mahina]

30. download ghostery at ghostery.com

And you can ki all tracking software. It's a great program.

[Brigid]

22. A couple of years ago . . .

Someone here posted a story about a man who discovered that his teenage daughter was pregnant when Target, by tracking her purchases, figured it out and started sending coupons for baby stuff to the house. In other words, Target knew it before the father did. A potentially explosive situation, to say the least.

[Auntie Bush]

27. That's outrageous.

I ordered shoes...now I get shoes scrolling down the page on both sides. Very distracting and annoying. Anyone who uses my computer knows just what items I'm interested in. Good thing nothing is illegal or sexual..

[arikara]

28. Just don't use the google for searches

There are better more private ones. I use ixquick, I think it's the same as start page which someone mentioned already. I also use Firefox browser with the ad blocker addons. Im always surprised now when I use a different computer or browser and see all the annoying ads.