Offensive marketing technique?

Hi,

is this what happend to me nowadays normal?


Story:

I was interested in the Try&Buy Program from SUN Microsystem,
looking for a workstation/PC.
I had a question about VAT and buying this stuff privatly/individual, not through a company deal.
To get an answer, I only provided my name, private email address and private home address.

Now two weeks later. I got a call at my company's office from an SUN dealer!
No answer how they know where I work.
We agreed that they send me an offer to my email address, because I already provided
my private email address, right.
They send it to my work email address I've never talked about! They must have
tried out several version. Because normally the mail address works like lastname.forename@
they send it to forename.lastname@. It seems the email server is flexibel about this.
In that email of course they mentioned my employer company as the contractor!
And of course this offer was higher then that mentioned on the SUN website.

WTF - How do they know the company where I work, and more importantly
why do they think the company I have never mentioned will buy this stuff? Scary...

I figured out that when you type my real name in Google search, Google lists
a number of dudes with the same name like mine. And only one of them is the right link to my employer company.

I have a story of an even worse issue.

I posted a message to a customer newsgroup of a large security product vendor. This was done via a listserver. In my haste I forgot to remove my signature that had my phone/email.

The next day I get a phone call from a sales person at a competitor company. This person actually admitted they got my info from the news digest of the listserver. He then wanted to sell me a replacement for the system I had asked a question about.

Just goes to show you one slip and your contact info an wind up in the hands of some real slimeballs.

In Italy we have a Privacy Protection Authority to which you can report these kind of things. It is doubtful whether they actually do anything about it but at least you get the idea you are striking back....:naughty:

Think you have it bad? This is how things are over here:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-02/anonymity-experiment

And every bit of it is for sale.