[that_guy_iain]

Your PII will be in their CRM and they will have access to their CRM. Literally all they need to do this is your name and linkedin. If you think sales people won't have access to names of potential leads then I am not sure what you think sales people do on outbound sales.

[hobofan]

Even in an CRM there should be checks on who can access what PII and when. There is a difference between "you are assigned 100 leads for the duration of lead qualification" and "you can yourself pick out leads (and can get access to their PII) out of any of the thousands of possible leads".

[that_guy_iain]

I think your expectations of how a company handles Leads are unrealistic. A company just needs to keep your data safe. A sales person having access to Leads makes complete sense. A sales person being able to see if a lead has been chased makes sense. A sales person being able to find Leads to chase that they are best qualified to chase makes sense.

[SilasX]

Yes, and MS claimed that their agreement with Canonical required them not to share that info with sales.

[that_guy_iain]

No it said not use that for marketing. And they didn't, the sales person said he would be the point of contact. They didn't market or try to sell him something in his message. He just send a request to be his contact.

[SilasX]

Most people would view the message as being marketed to.

The employee was referred to as a salesperson. Any difference from marketing is pedantic.

[that_guy_iain]

The legal difference is important. No court would ever agree that “I’m your point of contact” is marketing anything. And since it was about the legal agreement between Microsoft and Cannonical the legal difference is anything but pedantic.

[SilasX]

Courts look at the intent of contracts in the minds of the signers, not hyper literal readings of fixed-in-stone words. When both MS and Canonical agree that this breached acceptable usage, it’s time to give up that fight.