Fheardhaigh

Hi all-

Just received an email from the manager at a branch with which I have a future reservation asking for flight information in order to facilitate gold service. Unfortunately, this was a group email sent to about 20-30 customers and ALL of the emails were unblinded/visible.

Needless to say I am unhappy that Hertz has sent my private email address to a bunch of total strangers.

Whom should I address this with so that it will receive the proper attention and how should I expect Hertz to handle it?

Thanks for any advice!

azepine00

Unless the email included your social security number i don't see a problem there. What privacy breach?

3Cforme

Handle it?

'Oops. Sorry.'

Fheardhaigh

I don't routinely publish my email address to the general public and I expect the people I do business with to keep that information private.

I guess I view it in much the same way as publishing my home address or telephone number. Sure it may not result in identity theft but it does expose me to unwanted contacts as well as allows others unknown to me to identify my whereabouts and travel plans on a specific date.

I expect better.

AndyTLe

E-mail Hertz corporate. It is unacceptable to reveal your e-mail address in such a manner.

cordelli

Just reply back to the manager letting them know he should have used BCC instead.

They have probably never given it a second thought, and maybe now they will.

jordyn

Although I agree Hertz was wrong to do this and you have a (minor) beef with them, I also think this is a pretty minor infraction with very little impact since the exposure was to a handful of other renters.

I agree with the advice to respond to the manager and ask them to be careful in the future. That is the outcome that will have the cause the most good, and it's hard to see that Hertz owes you more than a polite apology here.

darben

You could also e-mail all others and make them aware of the breach. The others may not be aware.

pinniped

*shrug* Another reason I always use a Yahoo email with travel companies...I just assume they're purposely sharing it with all sorts of third parties but I guess I should add unintentional sharing to the list as well.

I might drop the guy a note recommending he use BCC. Nothing screams Amateur Hour like a mass email where a pagefull of addresses visible in the header.

And if it's intended to be an incredibly secure email address that few people are intended to have access to, get yourself a Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail/whatever account and give that to travel companies instead.

If course if my CC or SSN wasn't in the email I might not even bother taking the 2 minutes to educate the email n00b at Hertz with a reply. I'd probably just delete it.

Fheardhaigh

I guess maybe I am just a little more paranoid than most!

I was wondering about whether I should direct my concern to the corporate privacy folks or just give the manager a friendly heads-up. It sounds like most people would opt for the later so I will shoot him an email.

Thanks for all of the great replies!

ahrz

I had the problem once, short after someone sent such a group mail to my primary mail address, that I was flooded by spam.

To avoid this, I use a private domain and a "catch all" mailbox, I can generate mail addresses as needed for one time or multiple use, and block them if they get "compromised".

xavierYYZ

I'd recommend as others did to reply to the sender and explaining why your upset. Then speak to the manager at the location the day of the rental.

I guess it depends on the email adress as well: if it's some random nonsensical combination @ hotmail dot com. That's one thing.

If it was your first name dot last name @ cia dot gov: we'll that's whole other story.

Good luck.