Business Mailing List Marketing News

Company to buy mailing list

By Crysta Parkinson, News Editor
July 6, 2005 - A company may be about to sell your personal information, and there is nothing the county can do to protect your overstuffed mailbox.

The whole deal leaves a bad taste in the mouth of county officials, but a company called Info USA has made a request for details on each occupied residence in Williams County. Regardless of what smacks of private gain from personal information, the request is one the county obligated to fulfill, according to County Auditor Beth Innis.

"I just really don't want to do this," Innis told the commissioners. "But it's open records, there's nothing we can do about it. Our hands are kind of tied."

The original request was quite extensive, according to an e-mail from the company. Much of the information requested is not available in the county's computer system and would involve a rework of the programming, Innis said.

Several commissioners voiced concerns over providing information that would be resold, but options are limited by the law, Innis explained.

"We can't not provide the information," Innis reiterated several times during the discussion. At least in part, the information being requested is public record, protected by public information acts.

The request asks for approximately 20 line items of information on each owner-occupied home, from all names appearing on record of ownership and their address (mailing and physical) to year built, building characteristics and zoning codes. Information on the county's assessments and taxes is also requested.

But the law does not require providing information that is not available in a report, and it does not require tracking down and compiling the additional information, something that would come at substantial cost to the county. In addition, any data that is considered private would not be released.

Instead, a copy of what the auditor's office calls a "property master" will likely be provided, which includes the owner's name, address, property identification and legal description.

The question then comes down to how the information will be provided, and at what cost.

The request has been made to each of the counties in North Dakota, Innis explained, and she recently discussed with several other county auditors how the situation was being handled in those areas.

In Cass County, the auditor is charging a $25 set-up fee along with $20 per gig of information. This system wouldn't apply to the vastly smaller amount of information for Williams county, Innis said.

Other counties are charging a flat rate of $500 for the time and effort involved.

"Whatever they pay, I don't think they're paying enough to get this privileged information on our tax payers," Innis said.

Innis recommended a charge of 10 cents per parcel to cover the costs of the files, the work involved in creating them, and delivery. There are approximately 22,000 parcels of land in Williams County.

Additionally, the discussion includes what format the information will be provided in. The company has requested the files be provided electronically, whether as an e-mail attachment, CD or floppy disk.

The county commissioners made the decision that the affected county departments should get together and come up with a plan for answering the request and present it at a future board meeting. The next meeting of the Williams County Commissioners will be July 11.

According to their Web site, Info USA is "the nation's biggest sales lead and mailing list company," boasting over four million "customers." The company's services include occupant lists to reach every person in a given area, and dozens of categories of more specialized lists, including bankruptcy and tax lien lists, new homeowners and medical professionals. The Nebraska-based company will add the Williams County information to these databases.

Info USA claims to "comply with and fully support all do-not-contact laws." A sales representative who gave his name as Jason said a person or business could have their name removed from the Info USA database by calling their offices at 1-800-321-0869 and providing a name and address.

http://www.willistonherald.com/articles/2005/07/06/news/news2.txt

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