Before this weekend, you'd probably never heard of Epsilon Data Management. But the Texas-based marketing firm had almost certainly heard of you.
In fact, the company behind the high-profile leak of data belonging to Best Buy, Target, The College Board, Walgreens and other big-name firms probably has an intimate relationship with you. It says it holds information on 250 million worldwide consumers, and its company credo is to offer a "complete 360 degree view" of customers. Getting a 360-degree of Epsilon is a bit harder.
"People are saying, 'Who is this company and why should they have my personal information?'” said Larry Ponemon, a privacy consultant who runs The Ponemon Institute.
They also might wonder why at least one company executive thinks Americans are overly prone to "indignation" about unwanted e-mails.
Epsilon does the dirty work of e-mail list management, upkeep and complaint interference for household brands around the world, including Disney, Capital One and Kroger. Most consumers have no idea that Epsilon has their e-mail and name -- the e-mails generally appear to be from a retail firm with which the consumer has a business relationship. That relationship usually begins with a simple check box on a website or a form filled out during a retail store purchase, but it can last for years. Many consumers complained on Monday that they received warning notices about the e-mail leak from multiple companies. Some consumers might not have interacted with the firm for years before Epilson's database was stolen.
"Jerks at @RobertHalf kept my data on file 3 yrs. after I told them I NEVER wanted to work w/ them again. Now a hacker has my data. #Epsilon," complained one Twitter user on Monday.
Epsilon’s servers churned out 40 billion e-mails last year and are capable of sending 15 million per second, according to the firm’s website. And at least one of the company’s executives clearly doesn't appreciate when consumers get in the way.
'Trigger happy'A big part of Epsilon's job is convincing Internet service providers that the e-mails it sends on behalf of brand-name companies aren't spam. Annoyed recipients will trigger consumer complaints and spam reporting, which can cause a red flag at an ISP and ultimately disrupt an e-mail campaign.
Tony Cheung, an Epsilon vice president based in China, lamented in a recent column on the firm's site about Americans' “indignation response” to unwanted e-mails.
"Few Chinese e-mail users actually click to unsubscribe unwanted inbound mails, in stark contrast to the far more trigger-happy Americans and Europeans," he wrote.
By most accounts, Epsilon takes pains to stay on the right side of the law and of spam filters, and frequently offers advice to retailers that sending unwanted e-mails is a bad idea. The firm's e-mails include the usual opt-out mechanisms, and it prides itself on something it calls "Epsilon Data Hygiene," which helps keep e-mail and direct marketing lists up to date.
Behind the curtainBut Friday's data theft offers a rare window into the secretive world of consumer database collection and third-party marketing firms. It's a view that bothers Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
"Most companies do not tell the consumer that we're taking your information and sharing it for purposes of fulfilling this need -- for example, e-mail marketing or handling of the account," he said. "They are not really being transparent about it."
But nearly all companies do it; very few handle e-mail relationships in-house, said Dave Franklin, a Forrester analyst who studies electronic marketing. Firms like Epsilon -- and competitors like Acxiom and Merkle -- offer far more than mere e-mail services. Epsilon is part of Alliance Data Systems, which offers broad customer relationship management services, including transaction processing and analytics. That means Epsilon is capable of tracking e-mail response rates, mapping them to in-store purchase decisions and demographic information, and analyzing the data with a host of other advanced marketing tools.
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