When Geico’s Email Privacy Policy Attacks

When Gmail went Beta, I was in early enough to get a wonderful/simple address. The down side with this and the combination of having a common name, is it seems hundreds of others believe they also have my email address. I get no less than 2-10 personal emails and 10+ transactional emails for the wrong person daily. These emails range from family photos, to sexy emails, to business proposals, and everything else in between. Today someone signed up with Geico with my email address, and it posed an interesting yet ironic and completely illogical twist with their privacy policy. It all started with the following I wrote in response to the email they sent me for the wrong person:

Frederick used the wrong email address. I am not him. Please remove me.

They replied:

We apologize for the inconvenience. We have mailed our Policyholder a letter requesting that he contact us to update the mailing address on file.

Alright – I chalked this one up to not paying attention and replied once more:

Email address, not mailing, and I’m not Fredrick.

This is the answer I got back:

Dear Rich Brooks:

Thank you for using GEICO’s online services.

I apologize for any misinformation. Unfortunately, due to privacy laws,
we are unable to update policy information without the consent of our
policyholder. We have mailed a letter requesting an updated email
address.

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

We appreciate your business and look forward to serving your insurance
needs for years to come.

It looked to me as they were saying it’s alright to send me someone’s personal information, as long as they do not break their own privacy policy by changing poor Fredrick’s email address without his consent. I had to ask just that:

Due to privacy laws you can’t remove my email address, but you can knowingly keep sending me (the wrong person) his information?

Dear Rich Brooks:

Thank you for using GEICO’s online services.

We apologize for the confusion. As soon as we hear from our policyholder, we will update the email address on file. Once again, we apologize for all of the inconvenience we have caused you.

Well there’s my answer. Yes, it is ok to send me someone else’s information as long as they do not change his email address on file. Also I know this is form letter stuff, but I can’t take them very seriously when they keep thanking me for using their online services and thanking me for their business. I’ve never used Geico for anything before.