End Of FANAFI Junkmail Saga

If you missed out, Jeff of the Prosper group FANAFI Finance and the now closed My Microfinance blog had accused Prosper of selling their personally identifiable information to junk mailers. After some back and forth, Jeff announced a renewed interest in Prosper but would not talk about how the junk mail bruhaha had been resolved. It was just hanging out there.

A few things have happened that have cleared the air for me. First, Jeff did an interview with RateLadder where he addresses, among other things, his accusation:

Recently you had made a claim that Prosper had been selling your contact information. Do you still believe that?
Unfortunately I never had a chance to set the record straight on this one since they haven’t ‘officially’ replied to me. Prosper is not likely the only company possibly divulged our information based upon the following… Catherine has yet to reply to me on the record about their findings. However my ‘other’ contact at Prosper.com has told me that they have not sold our data to any third parties, but if they had it would not include any fictitious data or name such as the one we keep there. It would be nice however to hear this from Catherine (you have my email address, use it). This sort of clears it up enough for me to press on with the events of your next question as I trust my ‘other’ contact without condition… My one wish however… Official contact. I hate using back-channels to get information out of people, especially corporations who should know better.

Next, Prosper did reply to my inquiry into their inquiry and still does not think they're the culprit. Their findings:

• They made contact with the company that was sending junk mail to Jeff and they claimed no knowledge of Prosper.
  
• Prosper does not have "FANAFI Foundation" in any of their databases or records. The group Jeff started was called "FANAFI Financial".
  
• Even if FANAFI Foundation was in their records, junk mailers typically buy individual names and contact information, not group names.
  

My own search showed that at one point in the past, Jeff used "FANAFI_Foundation" as his userID (notice the "_"), and this can be found on Prosper's website. The question, then, relates to what search criteria was used by Prosper.

And finally, Jeff has possibly identified an alternative source of the junk mail, as he has related in an e-mail exchange with me:

... the source of the information has been found to be PayPal.com, which, upon re-inquiry with the company who had called to offer credit to one 'FANAFI Foundation' corrected himself to say that indeed PAYPAL, not Prosper had given them our information (bigger oopsie for those of you who use PayPal.com by the way). We do carry a business account with PayPal.com, but had not made the link until the source of the original data pointed me toward that account. Upon checking, yes, we are indeed registered there with that name, which will be changed to see if the calls and junk mail shift away.

I don't hold back from criticizing Prosper when they do things wrong, but that didn't happen this time. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Junk Mail Seller Revisited

Jeff at My Microfinance had previous claimed that Prosper was selling his address to junk mail groups. Even though there was reason to question the accuracy of his claim, he ranted and raved with the best of them.

Since these claims, Jeff posted that he was lending on Prosper again with this cryptic reply:

Prosper.com has rectified the issue with me in private. Plain and simple… confused yet? I’m not going to bust out the 4th grade attitude and tell you that I know something you don’t know, but something is happening inside the ‘blue stonewall’ that may change some opinions after Prosper Days, even those of it’s harshest critics. Mine just happens to have changed early and perhaps for the better.”

He then proceeded to scrub his entire blog's history, removing all incidents of his ranting and raving (except for that darn Google cache), and proceeded into a happy land. Jeff jumped up and screamed that the sky was falling then claimed he was OK now. If information was sold or otherwise leaked out of Prosper, it's interesting. If Jeff jumped the gun and cried wolf, he should apologize. Instead he scrubbed his entire blog's history, removing all incidents of his ranting and raving (except for that darn Google cache), and proceeded into a happy land. This is very bad form, so Jeff gets a wag of the finger.

Junk Mail Bruhaha

My Microfinance has started a bit of a controversy by claiming that Prosper is selling their personal information to direct-mail marketing organizations.

So recently I’ve had a HUGE surge in junk mail, junk email and junk phone calls from people in the past few months asking for a fictitious company (FANAFI Foundation). When I asked one of them today where they got my business name (FANAFI Foundation) they politely told me it was SOLD to them by Prosper Marketplace, Inc.!

Prosper's Chief Marketing Officer Catherine Muriel wasted no time responding. She quickly denied the charge and promised to investigate:

Prosper would like to confirm that under no circumstances have we or do we ever sell our member names or group names for marketing purposes. How this company - Direct Capital Corp. - obtained the FANAFI name and contact information is something we are looking into and will investigate fully, however, the information was not originated from Prosper.
Catherine Muriel - CMO - Prosper Marketplace, Inc.

The story has captured some imaginations because of Prosper's personally identifiable information crusades. After all, there's nothing more satisfying than catching a corporation acting hypocritical. I was initially skeptical because I could not directly connect FANAFI with a Prosper login in a meaningful way. Traveler505 put together a more well thought out commentary on the .org:

I had seen this earlier, but hesitated before posting a link because, quite frankly, the whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

AFAIK, the only context in which Prosper would have "FANAFI Foundation" in its member database is that it was Jeff's Prosper ID from March 7, 2007, to January 11, 2008. (He also used it for blogging and website purposes, but that wouldn't normally become part of his Prosper member data.) It's possible that his group was named FANAFI Foundation (as opposed to FANAFI or FANAFI Financial) at some point, but I don't recall it (and there is no historical record of group name changes).

Jeff is a borrower, as well as a lender and GL, so it's conceivable - though highly unlikely, since I doubt that FANAFI Foundation has generated much income - that he listed FANAFI Foundation as his employer when he listed. (He didn't list as self-employed on the second listing.)

If Prosper were to sell member data for marketing purposes, it's hard to believe that they would include User IDs in the database, or that the buyers would want that data, IMO. It just doesn't strike me as an industry norm. This is particularly true, I would think, if the data was filtered through a third party (Experian, as Jeff alleges); I would expect that even if Prosper didn't adhere to list management industry norms, Experian would.

Experian is certainly in the data marketing business. I don't know if they serve as list broker for companies like Prosper, as opposed to collecting and selling their own data. Because Jeff is a borrower, Prosper would have reported his payment history to Experian and, unless he opted out, Experian might sell that data (in some form) for marketing purposes. But the data uploaded from Prosper, AFAIK, would not have included his User ID; the only Experian field I can think of where that could be provided is employer, and, again, I doubt that Jeff claimed to be employed by "FANAFI Foundation."

Like Jeff, I'm a borrower, lender, and GL, but I haven't gotten any junk (mail/phone/email) referencing Traveler505 or Comprehensive Borrower Services. I doubt that anyone is manually cleaning the lists to differentiate between User IDs that sound like a business and those that don't. (However, my main contact is a cell phone, which telemarketers tend not to call, and my other numbers almost always go to voicemail when the Caller ID suggests telemarketer. But that leaves a physical address and unfiltered email mailbox which haven't gotten any junk like he describes.)

Color me confused. I hope that some additional information surfaces about this report.

I'll be watching as more develops, though I'm hoping it is a bit of confusion and not Prosper acting poorly.