Grafs Sells Your Personal Info To Spammers

I received a spam, and it was sent to an email address that has only been used with Grafs & Sons, www.grafs.com. It's clear that Grafs sold my personal information to spammers. I called to inquire and the customer service agent told me that Grafs did sell my personal information to the spammers, but she assured me that my account had now been marked "Do Not Sell", as if that somehow rebuilds the trust that was lost when my personal information was sold. I said that I expected some degree of privacy when I entered into a business relationship with Grafs and I was told that selling customer information is a common practice. It may be a common practice, but that doesn't make it right.

I checked the Grafs website and I found no page explaining Grafs privacy policy, nor did I find any way to opt out of having my personal information sold to spammers. Apparently, the default situation is selling all customers' personal information, and for the very few who manage to realize that Grafs sold their personal information to spammers, they can be placed on the Do Not Sell list, as if that somehow excuses this blatant violation of trust. Almost none of the Grafs customers will realize that Grafs sold their personal info, so they have no recourse as they drown in spam. They don't even know who to blame.

I supplied my personal information to Grafs to facilitate business communications with Grafs when placing orders. I obviously didn't intend to sign up for spam.

I have sent links to Grafs merchandise to several of my friends, and posted similar links on gun forums. I now feel like an idiot, having advertised for Grafs when they were selling my personal information to spammers behind my back. Marking my account as Do Not Sell is far from sufficient. I told them to delete my account at Grafs. I will never purchase from Grafs again, and will advise as many shooters as possible about their blatant disregard for customer privacy.

I'll keep buying from MidwayUSA.com. At least they inform customers of their policy and provide a simple way to opt out before the spammers have my email address. I gave them a unique email address too, and they have never violated my privacy. Grafs and Cheaper Than Dirt both sell customer lists to spammers.

Today's spam via Grafs was from Predator Extreme. They're selling a magazine I don't want to buy. Someone else told me they received that spam today and wondered if it was Grafs that sold their info. The Grafs customer service agent I spoke with today was fairly candid about the fact that they sold my info to that particular spammer, not that I needed any confirmation. Grafs is the only place where I used the email address grafs@<mycompany.com>.

The Cheaper Than Dirt spam was from CARE, of all places. Those spams were really weird to have been sent to a gun supplies mailing list. They were written from a very female perspective, and also a very liberal leaning perspective, almost with an implied anti-gun slant to them. They just seemed like they weren't very well targeted to the list they bought.

I do a fair amount of online business, both personal and work purchases, and the gun industry seems much worse about selling customer data to spammers.

Do people really check the fine print on the Terms page before doing business with an online supplier? I didn't, but I guess I should have. Even after the fact, I went looking for their policy concerning customer data and while it is on their website, I wouldn't exactly say that it was openly disclosed. It took me a while to find it. I think most people have one email address they give to everyone, don't check the Terms page, and have no idea that Grafs is selling their personal info to spammers. That's why I posted this info. I thought people might want to know that, and make the effort to opt-out of the spam email list that Grafs opted them into automatically, or maybe tell Grafs they don't approve or their policy, or if they're as intolerant of spamming and selling personal information as I am, they can stop purchasing from Grafs.

But then again, if they had an opt-in policy, who would actually sign up for spam? I guess that's why they sign us up without telling us, other than a warning hidden away on a web page that few people visit.

I still think selling a customer's email address to spammers is a weaselly policy, even if they do refer to the spammers as qualified reputable companies affiliated with the shooting sports or some other nonsense. Spam is unsolicited commercial email, and that's exactly what I received. If it looks like spam and smells like spam and tastes like spam... it's spam.

I suggest doing what I and many other have done. Create a email account from a free site

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I have my own domain, so I give each company a unique email address. Any unspecified email address at that domain comes to me. It allows me to not only nuke an email address when some company sells it to spammers, but also to know which company sold my personal data. In this case, I thought others would like to know as well, because most people have no way of knowing that it was Grafs that was selling their personal info.