RadioShack Will Not Be Selling Your Phone Number To New Owners

(Matthew Hunt)

If you’re part of the 117 million or so names on RadioShack’s mailing list, we have good and bad news for you. Today, the Shack and various states’ attorneys general came to an agreement about what customer data may be sold to RadioShack’s new owners, and under what circumstances. Everyone has agreed that the Shack won’t be handing over customer phone numbers, but they also will be giving people on the mailing list only a week to opt out.

RadioShack, notorious collector of customer phone numbers, won’t be able to transfer those phone numbers to the new owners under this agreement.

If you’re on the e-mail list, you’ll be able to opt out at any time before the data is formally handed over (we’re not sure how, and will let you know when we find out.) The new owners will send out a “clear and conspicuous notification” saying where they got your e-mail address from and offering the opportunity to take yourself off that list.

If the Shack doesn’t have your current e-mail address but has your postal address, they’ll send a mailing out offering the opportunity to opt out within 30 days. There will be a 1-800 number available to do so.

If your e-mail address hasn’t been “active” in the last two years–that’s to say that you haven’t shopped at RadioShack or signed up for anything in the last two years–your data will not be transferred over to the new owners. If any mailings are returned as “undeliverable,” the new owners of RadioShack are supposed to remove that person’s information from the database, and their information will be “destroyed in accordance with standard industry practice.”

The new owners have also agreed that the previous RadioShack privacy policy applies to people on the mailing lists, and that any “material” changes to the policy will be opt-in only. If they wanted to sell the mailing list to other marketers, for example, they would need customers to agree to the new policy.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist