Tag: Data Protection Act 1998

Problems with Principle 8 and email marketing

The European Court of Justice has decided that the Safe Harbour Scheme (SHS) does not provide adequate protection for data transferred to the USA and therefore it falls outside Principle 8 of the Data Protection Act. In essence the court has recognised that agreements cannot be binding on national governments. The court ruling stated: "legislation … READ MORE »

The end of Safe Harbour for email marketing

Tuesday's finding of the European Court with regards the Safe Harbor Scheme (SHS) no longer being recognised as providing adequate protection for data transferred to the USA gives rise to fundamental concerns for email marketing. On these pages we warned of the risks of sending data to the USA well before the access that NSA … READ MORE »

Review of cookie setting

Email marketing has depended on setting cookies, the text-file tags set on the computers of browsers of websites. They have many functions, the most important from our point of view being to obtain statistics for our email marketing software. To lose the ability to set them would seriously restrict our advantages over other forms of … READ MORE »

Cookie monsters threatening email marketing

The heading is not strictly descriptive of this article, something I would argue against in normal circumstances, but I couldn’t let such an opportunity pass. I knew you would realise I was talking about those little ‘tags’ that allow tracking of user activity on websites. Email marketing software depends to a great extent on them. … READ MORE »

Data destruction and email marketing

Email marketing’s dependence on digital information has produced situations where a word in common usage is just not precise enough. Take destroy for instance. One dictionary definition is ‘to ruin completely’. It is not quite that straightforward once we start storing data on computers. The data needs to be legally secure. The Data Protection Act tells … READ MORE »

Destroying personal data

Always make sure that your clients are protected! The Data Protection Act (the Act) has 8 Principles, the fifth of which has the requirement that ‘personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes’. You must delete such data. Delete is … READ MORE »

Self-protection in email marketing

Sometimes there is a certain sympathy when a company is fined for an action which others had been considering. Managing risk is an essential skill in email marketing and when a company, even a competitor, falls just the wrong side of the line the first thought that goes through most people’s mind is relief that … READ MORE »

The safety of your email marketing lists

There is a saying which goes along the lines of: if you get the basics right, the rest will follow. I’m not sure that’s entirely right but the reverse is spot on. You can’t do anything without the fundamentals in place. A large travel insurance company has recently been heavily fined for contravention of the … READ MORE »

Doubles all round for email marketing?

There is no doubt that double opt-in, i.e. where a subscriber, however they subscribed, is sent an email asking for confirmation that they wish to receive your offers, gives better results that the single opt-in. All research confirms this, the only dispute being by how much. However, most samples are taken from a range of … READ MORE »

Email marketing security

There has been a plethora of scare stories in the media regarding hacking and internet security. Sony has been particularly hard hit, with a film and their Playstation becoming headline news. This has implications for email marketing. Many of your customers will be concerned about security and terms like cyber pirates and cyber hacking doesn’t … READ MORE »

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