Exact Data

Last updated
Exact Data
Private
Founded2001
Headquarters
Chicago, Illinois
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Lawrence Organ, CEO
ProductsPostal, Email, and Phone Lists
Website www.exactdata.com

Exact Data helps small and medium sized businesses acquire customers cost effectively, by selling highly targeted consumer and business email, postal and phone audiences. Exact Data is based in Chicago, Illinois and has offices in Los Angeles, California and Deerfield Beach, Florida.

Contents

History

Exact Data was founded in 2001 with the name Custom Offers LLC. The company has operated under several names, including Mosaic Data Solutions and ConsumerBase LLC. The company was renamed Exact Data in 2013. Lawrence Organ is the current CEO.

Exact Data sources consumer and business data from a national database comprising approximately 210 million names, postal addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses. [8]

Products and Services

Services include consumer and business mailing, email, and phone lists, modeling, and email marketing deployment and consultation.

FTC Warns of Possible Privacy Violations

On May 7, 2013, the Federal Trade Commission issued a release stating that a test-shopping sting operation through the FTC's Worldwide Privacy Protection Effort indicated that 10 companies, Exact Data ConsumerBase included, were willing to sell consumer information without abiding by the Fair Credit Reporting Act's (FCRA) requirements. [9]

Specifically, it was said that Exact Data ConsumerBase appeared to offer "pre-screened" lists of consumers for use in making firm credit card offers.

The incident aimed to increase awareness and expose data brokerage policies, not necessarily intending to accuse the companies of breaking laws. According to the Washington Post, “This should help raise awareness,” said Laura Berger, an attorney with the Bureau of Consumer Protection. She declined to comment on whether these or other companies are facing full investigations by the FTC. [10]

No actual data purchases were made, but an informal warning letter was sent to the company, as there was no hard evidence of wrongdoing.

Related Research Articles

Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act American federal cyber law

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) is a United States federal law, located at 15 U.S.C. §§ 65016506.

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant's relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. Many consumers find online advertising disruptive and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons.

<i>Inc.</i> (magazine) American business magazine

Inc. is an American business magazine founded in 1979 and based in New York City. It publishes eight print issues annually, as well as daily online articles and videos.

TrustArc is a privacy compliance technology company based in San Francisco, California. The company provides software and services to help corporations update their privacy management processes so they comply with government laws and best practices.  

Ambient Weather is an Arizona based weather station and software manufacturer that specializes in customized solutions and products for the home and office, industry, schools, resorts, government and the media.

Veriato, formerly known as SpectorSoft, is a software company that develops and sells user behavior analytics and employee monitoring software.

Spokeo is a people search website that aggregates data from online and offline sources.


Chitika, Inc. was a search-targeted advertising company. It was located in Westborough, Massachusetts, United States. The name Chitika means "in a snap" in Telugu language.

Jon Leibowitz Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission

Jonathan David Leibowitz is an American lawyer who served as the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He is currently co-chairman of the 21st Century Privacy Coalition, a group that aims to loosen regulations for how companies have to protect consumer's sensitive information. He is also a partner at the law firm of Davis Polk.

Tagged website

Tagged is a social discovery website based in San Francisco, California, founded in 2004. It allows members to browse the profiles of any other members, and share tags and virtual gifts. Tagged claims it has 300 million members as of 2014. As of September 2011, Quantcast estimates Tagged monthly unique users at 5.9 million in the United States, and 18.6 million globally. Michael Arrington wrote in April 2011 that Tagged is most notable for the ability to grow profitably during the era of Facebook.

Vantage Media is an advertising technology company with headquarters in El Segundo, California that specializes in real-time bidding for customer acquisition.

Balsam Hill makes artificial Christmas trees, Christmas decorations and home decor for consumer and commercial use. The privately held company is located in Northern California and serves customers worldwide. Balsam Hill specializes in artificial Christmas trees modeled after naturally occurring varieties of commonly used Christmas trees.

In the middle of 2009 the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against Sears Holdings Management Corporation (SHMC) for unfair or deceptive acts or practices affecting commerce. SHMC operates the sears.com and kmart.com retail websites for Sears Holdings Corporation. As part of a marketing effort, some users of sears.com and kmart.com were invited to download an application developed for SHMC that ran in the background on users' computers collecting information on nearly all internet activity. The tracking aspects of the program were only disclosed in legalese in the middle of the End User License Agreement. The FTC found this was insufficient disclosure given consumers expectations and the detailed information being collected. On September 9, 2009 the FTC approved a consent decree with SHMC requiring full disclosure of its activities and destruction of previously obtained information.

Re-liance, Inc. is a financial services company with its headquarters in Lake Worth, Florida. The company was incorporated in 2001 by Deidre Rodriguez, Enrique Rodriguez, and Frontier Trading Corp. Inc, the parent holding company. The company was included in the Inc 500 list at #452 with a 3-year revenue growth rate of 663% between 2006 and 2009.

Do Not Track legislation protects users’ right to choose whether or not they want to be tracked by third-party websites. It is often called the online version of "Do Not Call". The legislation is supported by privacy advocates and opposed by advertisers and services that use tracking information to personalize web content. Senator Josh Hawley has introduced currently pending legislation called the Do Not Track Act.

Deluxe Marketing

Deluxe Marketing Inc. (DMI) is a private company that offers management-consulting services. Deluxe Marketing Inc. is known for focusing on direct, in-person marketing strategies. The company was named one of the fastest-growing private companies in Silicon Valley. Inc. magazine ranked the company as one of the fastest-growing businesses in the United States in 2010, 2011, and 2012. Jeremy Larson founded the company in 2003.

Privé Jets is a private company that brokers air transportation and luxury private charters. The company has over 6,000 aircraft in its network and access to 50,000 airports worldwide. The company is headquartered in Hallandale, Florida. In 2012, Privé Jets was named to the Inc. 5000. As of 2017, the company had made the list for six consecutive years. It had $28.5 million in annual revenues in 2005, according to Inc.

<i>United States v. Google Inc.</i>

United States v. Google Inc., No. 3:12-cv-04177, is a case in which the United States District Court for the Northern District of California approved a stipulated order for a permanent injunction and a $22.5 million civil penalty judgment, the largest civil penalty the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ever won in history. The FTC and Google Inc. consented to the entry of the stipulated order to resolve the dispute which arose from Google's violation of its privacy policy. In this case, the FTC found Google liable for misrepresenting "privacy assurances to users of Apple's Safari Internet browser". It was reached after the FTC considered that through the placement of advertising tracking cookies in the Safari web browser, and while serving targeted advertisements, Google violated the 2011 FTC's administrative order issued in FTC v. Google Inc.

Avant, LLC, formerly AvantCredit, is a private Chicago, Illinois-based company in the financial technology industry. The company was established in 2012 by serial entrepreneur Albert "Al" Goldstein, John Sun, and Paul Zhang. Initially structured as a mid-prime lender, the company issued its first personal unsecured loan in early 2013 using its proprietary technology to determine an individual's creditworthiness.

References

  1. "ConsumerBase Launches New Mailing List Search Engine, ListFinder." SFGate. San Francisco Chronicle, 14 Feb. 2011. Web. 25 Mar. 2013.
  2. "Exact Data ConsumerBase Launches New Website, Opens New Office." MarketingPR.eu. Marketing News and PR, 7 Jan. 2013. Web. 26 Mar. 2013.
  3. 1 2 "ConsumerBase." Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Companies. Inc., 2012. Web.
  4. Schneider, Joanna. "5 Evanston Companies Ranked Among Fastest-Growing In U.S., Says 'Inc.' - Evanston, IL Patch." Evanston Patch. N.p., 30 Aug. 2012. Web. 24 Mar. 2013.
  5. 1 2 "Data Card Quality Report." NextMark. N.p., 2 Jan. 2013. Web.
  6. Rondon, Michael. "Data Services Firm Exact Data Buys Statlistics." FolioMag. N.p., 26 Mar. 2013. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. Archived 2013-05-10 at the Wayback Machine >.
  7. Flaherty, Anne. "FTC Puts Background Check Sites on Notice." Huffington Post. Huffington Post, 7 May 2013. Web. 8 May 2013.
  8. "Mailing Lists & Sales Leads." Archived 2013-05-05 at the Wayback Machine Exact Data ConsumerBase. N.p., 2013. Web.
  9. "FTC Warns Data Broker Operations of Possible Privacy Violations." FTC Warns Data Broker Operations of Possible Privacy Violations. Federal Trade Commission, 07 Mar. 2013. Web. 08 May 2013.
  10. Timberg, Craig. "FTC Warns Data Brokers on Privacy Rules." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 07 May 2013. Web. 08 May 2013.