If Cision made representations in writing that the list you were sold was opt-in, you may possess the smoking gun needed to expose these spammers and perhaps bring them to justice. If you’re willing to help, please contact me through my site, linked above. I’m a journalist for a leading Los Angeles radio station and guarantee as much anonymity as you desire. Thanks.

Very interesting topic. I think what the Shut-Up folks seem to miss is not your rights being impinged….Cision is selling bad email addresses. Their customers should be very upset. If I bought a list that was sold to me as Opt-In I expect it to be just that. Doesn’t that qualify their actions as fraud?

M

Hmm. I guess it’s time to stir the pot again. Would you mind posting the links to which you’re submitting spam complaints? Thanks.

/chris

“We are not required to provide an opt-in option to list your email address,” writes Cision’s Heidi Sullivan.

How did they get my unpublished email address? “Unfortunately, we do not keep a record of every single action that one of our researchers makes,” writes Sullivan. That lack of an accountability trail didn’t stop a Cision agent from lying to me in my first phone call to the company about how her firm captured my address.

Cision refuses to provide a spokesperson for broadcast interview yet it admits that after the cirm allegedly ceases selling your info, Cision clients may continue to spam from its lists. “This is not a practice that we encourage,” writes Sullivan.

Still, it is unclear whether Cision prohibits such behavior in its user agreements, or whether it requires its clients provide an opt-out remedy in spam sent to Cision victims. Every email I’ve ever received from a Cision client has had none and clearly meets the legal criteria for spam. I forward every instance to the Federal Trade Commission’s spam database and to SpamCop for IP blacklisting.

Cision profits from turning thousands of corporations and organizations into spambots while inflicting, without permission, junk email on “more than 1.1 million journalists, freelancers, bloggers and key stakeholders world wide.” It is reprehensible behavior that must not be allowed to continue.

Thanks for the note. I’m glad to hear Cision is taking the complaints seriously. As you said, they’re not following the call to action I’d like to see, but who died and left me king? I’ll take it as a move in the right direction. I’ll see what I can find out over the next few days and do another post if it’s warranted.

Thanks,

/chris

He also told me that based on complaints that they have been addressing, customers are only allowed to send a limited number of emails through their platform. (That is based on how many you pay for, of course.) That policy, he explained, was intended to minimize the practice of sending out thousands of un-vetted emails, creating spam. I realize that is not exactly the call to action you made, but I, as a prospective customer, have to think that they are making some effort to turn that big boat around. Especially, after listening to many of their competitor’s presentations.

No worries, we always make the intimate pitch, so I will not be spamming you with your Cision generated contact info, at least not before I know exactly what you write about.

I find it telling that you find no fault with the fact that Cision scraped my name and sold it, nor with the fact that they blame their own customers for the problem and evade being pinned down on their own behavior while talking up their interest in “open accountability”. You can only conclude, ~anonymously~, that the fault lies with my own big ego for calling out bad behavior because hell, any rational person would just keep bending over, since real accountability makes the perpetrators feel uncomfortable and upset. Tell you what. Take a little of your own advice. Get used to it and quit complaining.

And if you have the open channel into Cision you imply, you can tell them there’d be nothing to get their panties in a twist about if they walked their talk and engaged in dialog. You know, like this.