Ransom: Customer Data
Privacy from Companies
10/10/2000; 9:57:37 AM

'Jules Neuringer never intended to become a martyr. But that was before Motorola tried to co-opt his customers. Now, the man who spent 30 years minding his own business selling two-way radios in Brooklyn, N.Y., finds himself the unofficial spokesman for a small but growing band of independent dealers in a catch-22 nightmare they say was crafted by one of the communications industry's biggest players.

'The catch: Independent dealers are being told they must turn over their proprietary customer data - the lifeblood of their business - or lose the right to sell Motorola's popular two-way radios. But if they give up that valuable information about the customers they have spent years cultivating, there's nothing to prevent the Schaumburg, Ill., manufacturer from using the Internet to cut the dealers out of the loop.'

From Privacy Digest, two links: Motorola's response in a letter to the editor of RCR Wireless news, and An end user of the radios writes a 'letter to the editor'.