And again, making something illegal does not prevent it from happening. Laws will not protect your virgin email address. Folks need to take it upon themselves to protect their information, and that includes consideration on sharing, remembering what you’ve signed up for, and what their terms are.
I feel pretty confident in saying that generalized questions about the amount of privacy one can expect online and with regard to their email addresses is pretty off topic for this forum. If it related directly back to the IFPA then fine, but 10-15 of the last 20 messages are just people going back and forth about whether or not [x] level of privacy expectation is realistic or legal. Take it to Reddit.
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I agree… but too bad the IFPA marketing of pinball people is off-topic here! LOL
I actually said that as it relates to the ifpa it is specifically on topic, but once it falls into the realm of just going back and forth about whose expectations are or aren’t out of line then it’s not.
Lol!
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As I recall, your IFPA profile only requires an email if you want to be eligible for IFPA- and sponsor-related events, i.e. the IFPA World Championship, SCS, Stern Circuit, etc. That’s the quid pro quo - - if you want to be in those events, you give up your email to sponsor-land. Any other events, not required, at least not by the IFPA (events may have their own rules). What would be nice is if you could get an intermediate level where ONLY the IFPA can have your email, which would allow you to be in the IFPAWC and SCS events, and you’re willing to forgo Stern Circuit and other sponsor-related things to keep your email out of sponsors’ hands.
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Oh ok. So which of the IFPA’s Premiere Sponsors was it then? Sponsors
I did that. They said they weren’t allowed to disclose who they represent.
All I’m saying is if the IFPA is going to share our email with sponsors, we should at least know which sponsor is actually contacting us.
Sure. I want Josh to have all my dollars. 
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Answer: I don’t know. Question: Why does it matter?
I completely disagree with this - there is no need for this disclosure. It would NOT be helpful for any particular sponsor for this information to be released, and would likely reduce sponsorship activities and IFPA income, so there are definitely reasons to not disclose it.
You always have the option to unsubscribe. Or you can keep using the IFPA’s services and send their emails to an unmonitored email box if they bother you.
Larry,
I don’t understand why it bothers you that some people (eg, Aurich) want to remove their email addresses from lists receiving marketing emails, that others (eg, Brian) want to know who has their email address or that others (eg, me) want to control which of my email addresses get sold to sponsors.
These are questions of basic courtesy. Reading the posts above, I don’t think anyone has voiced their concerns in a disrespectful manner or wrote anything inflammatory. I find the comments to be constructive.
If you don’t mind receiving the emails, that’s fine. But I don’t feel it’s helpful to tell others that their concerns simply have no merit.
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There is a lot to be said for REALITY tho. You (anyone) can go on about how the world isn’t bending to you, but sometimes the voice of reason is needed to say a concern is impractical, or isn’t as favorable to the other side, etc.
Devaluing the marketing list may sound great as an individual… and maybe an individual doesn’t care about the consequences, but that doesn’t make them go away or make them any less real.
I do wish these types of lists identified where your contact was SOURCED - but its a nice thing that really doesn’t lead to a solution.
If you really want to control it, the only thing you can do is ensure you use unique identifiers with each company you interact with. But even then, once you’ve ‘caught’ someone… not much to do about it.
What is the real end state people are concerned about?
Getting their info sold?
Knowing who has it?
Avoiding emails?
Which do we have the ability to control? What you give to who…
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Hi Eric,
It doesn’t bother me at all that Aurich wants removed or Brian doesn’t want his address sold. I am sorry if my replies appear blunt, and I definitely understand their concerns. The fact is, people already have the option to not have their addresses sold, or to not receive sponsorship messages, just as Aurich recently chose. I do question when people want to use the services of the IFPA but resist any attempts at them receiving compensation through marketing/sponsorship.
I wasn’t joking about the administrative fee… it would be nice if the IFPA had a membership level that allowed people to pay and receive services while removing themselves from all marketing. I wouldn’t use it but there certainly appears to be demand for such a thing.
Someone up thread said something pertinent, asking the lines of “I’m ok with getting spam from ifpa, it’s the Rayban etc spam mails that I don’t care about”
How do you think you ended up on a list where you can get those Rayban emails? It’s from some company or individual that you trusted with your email, who then either sold or had their (your) information taken through careless security right?
This is the reality that you’re trying to stress on us that we shouldn’t care about? We should just accept that people are careless with our data?
We all recognise that this information has a value, so wouldn’t it be better if I could say, yep. I’d fucking love the ifpa to market the fuck out of me, and raise mad dollars because I support what they do… BUT not by selling my information, because the moment they do that, they have distributed my information to a third party that I don’t trust, and don’t support, and… Well ultimately I’ll end up on a Rayban email list.
That’s the direction we’re hopefully heading in with the changes in law.
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Emails submitted to the IFPA are most definitely not sent out just to sponsors, premier or otherwise.
I’d like to hear more about this and your evidence to support the claim.
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FWIW, I emailed him twice asking what the survey was going to be used for and how he got my email address, and if he was unable to provide that information, to be removed from his list.
I have yet to receive any reply.
This post answers your question
No, that post was the impetus for the question. The question was asking which specific member company was responsible. I’m pointing my finger at those Raw Thrills guys. A bunch of nogoodniks, the whole lot.
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After checking out whether the apparent sender was legit I went ahead and completed the survey. I was certain the list came from IFPA or possibly Stern directly via game warranty registration or purchase history from their dealers. No way Pinside would sell their email list.
After completing the survey and seeing the nature of the questions it has to be Stern. Only the dominant company in the business would ask the types of questions about brand loyalty, etc. as all the other upstarts have bigger fish to fry than whether or not people prefer Spooky games or JJP ones. lol.
Anyway, I knew IFPA’s stance on the email list and don’t really mind Stern doing a market survey. It’s obviously optional. 
Stern was my guess, too. I didn’t get the email (or I didn’t check my spam). But I did read this thread! And I’m guessing Stern.
Well I’m in a pretty unique position where I can say with close to 100% certainty where my spam comes from.
Just in case you’re interested, the vast majority of my spam, maybe 80% or so is ‘non disguised’ spam - stuff from hotels, travel, and so on that I could probably cancel if I wasn’t so lazy.
The random spam for Rayban, pharma products, scams and so on is at least 50% from the dropbox and lastfm breaches (I actually informed lastfm about their breach two weeks before they went public with it. Never got any credit. Pfft). A smaller amount from some of the other breaches, such as Adobe and so on. A good 20% or so is to a ww-temp address from when I had a website. A surprising amount comes from an email address I published on my profile on StackOverflow, though I also get some legitimate emails through that too.
I can’t think that I’ve ever had spam to my personal email that friends and family use, so like I say - I’m pretty confident I know exactly where my spam is originating from.
And that means I’m also in a position where I chase up with companies that have either leaked or sold my email address. Mostly this is done as a show of concern, because sometimes (such as with the lastfm breach) this serves as early notification that a site has been hacked. Other than the IFPA I can only recall one other site (an online gambling site) that sold my email address in the last 20 or so years I’ve been doing this.
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I know this is an aside: I have a gmail account that is {roms.lastname}@gmail.com, and almost all of my spam comes from old people who share my last name and mistakenly think that my email address is theirs, and they have signed up for terrible stuff with it. It sucks. I’ve also had T-Mobile, Amazon, Instagram, etc accounts all set up by other people who think it’s their email. It can be a struggle to get my email removed from those accounts, when the email address is the company’s only point of contact with that person and so they have no idea what to change it to.
But aside from that address, I tend to start fresh with a new email address every couple of years, and I manage my stuff as well as I can on each one, and thus do not get spam - and the addresses are not on several thousand rayban lists.