MainSleaze

In the Finnish version of the Why won’t you tell us what email address was spammed article, I surmise that e-pending is largely unknown in Finland.

I stand corrected.

A business associate recently contacted me and let me know that they had been in touch with Fonecta over having all of the business’ email addresses removed from their database. The request was complied with, and they indicated that there had been two: a non-personal role address, and a personal address that indicates the owner’s first name, whereas the person is habitually known (always has been, apparently) by their other given name, has never used the email address firstname.lastname@ for anything, and so on (but you are required to inform the Companies Register of your full name when you set up shop, so it was there).

So, I stand corrected. E-pending appears to exist in Finland, and appears to be practiced by Fonecta, who, or so I hear, take the information in the companies register and turn your firstname.lastname@business.domain into an email address that they will then sell to their customers – never mind that it’s never been given to anyone and doesn’t necessarily even exist.

I wonder what the Data Protection Ombudsman thinks of not just processing (outdated and) erroneous personal information, but deliberately creating it?