I knew there was a company called jigsaw.com. I assumed it was for puzzle lovers. Then I stumbled on my colleague David Batstone’s blog entry about it. (Author of the WAG newsletter and the Right reality blog, David is another blogger on corporate ethics; I’ve been on his newsletter list for a couple of years.)

To say I was horrified is an understatement. This company actually pays people to gather business cards and punch the information into a for-sale database!

I don’t know about you, but I find that extremely creepy. I give a business card to someone because I’m interested in facilitating that person’s ability to stay in touch with me. As public as I am, and I’m pretty public, I don’t really want people exploiting me by selling my contact info. As it is, I am cursed, as an early adopter on the Internet, with the dubious honor of being included on every blankety-blank list of contacts that spammers buy and sell already.

Let me say categorically that if I ever find out that someone has mined my information in that way, I would *never* do business with that person again. It is an invasion of privacy and a very bad business model.