Beware of the Coral Reef Alliance!!!

[Russ]

They have no privacy policy that I can find on their web site. If there is one, and it is truthful, it will say “We will not respect your privacy in any way and we will gladly sell or rent your information to life insurance companies and Columbia House Record Club.

How do I know this? We tag all e-mail addresses we use to log onto web sites and we are now getting junk e-mail from companies addresses to the Coral Reef Alliance tag.

I sent them several e-mails asking them what was going on and they have not even bothered to answer me.

The fact that they seem to lack ethics on their web site leads me to wonder how ethical the rest of their operation is.

Please feel free to pass this warning on to other sea loving people.

Russ

 

[Janine Kraus]

Dear Russ,

Actually, CORAL has a very strong policy about not sharing (selling, renting, or giving away for free) email addresses of our members or those who have signed up for our free monthly e-newsletter, e-current. We have never shared email addresses - ever.

You can read this in our privacy policy on our website at www.coral.org.

We make a concerted effort to respond to all inquiries of any kind, whether they are information requests, inquiries from members or, our favorite, messages of thanks and congratulations from our many satisfied members and those whom we help around the world. We feel that every contact we make is an opportunity to help protect the world's coral reefs.

I would be happy to answer your questions directly.

Sincerely,

Janine Kraus
Managing Director
jkraus@coral.org

 

[Stephan Whelan]

Russ,

As you can see, Janine from CORAL has responded.

You say that you could not find a privacy statement on their website, yet I clicked onto http://www.coral.org and there at the bottom of the page was the link to the Privacy Policy at http://www.coralreefalliance.org/legal/privacy/

I have checked the privacy policy and it is in line with general rules concerning privacy.

I too am a member of the CORAL email lists and utilise the same sort of tracking on emails, however I have never received any unsolicited emails from other companies to the CORAL subscription address.

If you want to provide me with more information privately, i'd be willing to look into it.

 

[Russ]

Janine & Stephen,

Please note my original warning was posted on 26 August 2001. At that time I spoke to someone (a guy) at Coral Reef Alliance and asked him to tell me how to find their privacy policy. I was told at that time one did not exist.

I forwarded several e-mails to him with my Coral Reef Alliance tag. His only explanation was that perhaps someone who maintained their e-mail list had violated policy and sold or rented the list.

I find it interesting that the spam stopped shortly after that.

Your replies are both dated 5 March 2002 I hope it is because they now have their act together.

I wish them well. While I have not personally seen results from their work, on paper they seem to be trying to save the sea we all love.

Russ
:hmm