Steve Fenton

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Thursday, 2nd December 2010

Whenever someone collects your personal information online, they have to ask you if they can use that information for their own marketing purposes and for third-party marketing purposes. In most cases this boils down to two simple check boxes with accompanying text such as:

• Tick here if you do not wish to receive marketing information from Company Name Ltd.
• Tick here if you do not wish to receive marketing from selected third parties.

In most cases this is all fair enough, although you have to be careful as some companies reverse the logic so you "tick here to receive marketing information" rather than "tick here to opt out".

What I take exception to are when the two tick boxes do not use the same rule, such as this form on the Currys website:

On this form, you tick the first box to opt-out of Currys marketing, but ticking the second box will opt-in to third party marketing. This means you have to tick the first one, and leave the second un-ticked.

This isn't the kind of trick you would expect to see being employed by a reputable brand and I sincerely hope that Currys update this terrible example of tricking people who do not want to be contacted into signing up for third-party junk mail in their inbox.

As a consumer, I want to do business with retailers I can trust. I might be more inclined to use Comet in the future, who use simple easy to understand text to explain how to opt-in to their "perks" scheme, "Please email me special offers and deals".