HSBC Bank Nevada Sells your social security number, credit history, internet usage, and more to ANYONE!

Today I got a rather generic letter in the mail from HSBC Bank Nevada, N.A. At first I had no idea who they were. I have no such bank affiliation I thought to myself, which prompted me to read it. Figured out it was Best Buy who employs HSBC Bank Nevada, which I happen to have a consumer credit line with. The document, was a basic looking privacy policy with a font size of 5px so you would be sure not to read it. What I found were some of the most offensive business practices I have ever read. Now read this and tell me if this is the most deceitful business practice you have ever heard of.

The first to paragraphs are headed in bold with "Our commitment to You" and "We respect your privacy" They non shalantly state that they collect the common stuff like your name and address blah blah blah. After about four paragraphs you start getting to the good stuff. I quote

"the information we share could include your transactions with us or any of our affiliates (such as your account balance, payment history, and parties to the transaction), your Internet usage, or credit card usage" " We may also share your social security number, assets, income, or credit report"

By SHARE we mean SELL! In an earlier paragraph they mention "We respect your privacy, since some information we gather is not publicly available, we take great care to ensure that this information is kept safe from unauthorized access." Where is the section that says authorized access is only a payment away? WTF! They go on to state they "SHARE" your information with Affiliates Only, then later contradict that by saying that they from time to time "SHARE" your information with non-affiliates like mortgage bankers, insurance providers, internet service providers, data warehousing companies, retailers, and marketers. (but only if they feel the offer could benefit you.) But none of this is applicable to residents in Vermont, your local government has laws that protect consumers there that stop profiteering, dishonest companies like HSBC Bank Nevada.

And finally to appease the anyone who actually read this crap they throw in on the last page buried at the bottom "How to request that your information not be shared" They have a whole toll free number dedicated and manned by robots to deal with you. Enter your SSN, next lets trick the impatient ones with "If you would like to Opt-Out of HSBC's sharing of your information with non affiliates, press one" long pause then "If you would like to Opt-Out of HSBC's sharing of your information with affiliates, press two" and finally the only option you called for, and they damn well know it, "If you would like to Opt-Out of HSBC's sharing of your information with non affiliates and affiliates, press three" And for the grand finale, sorry we already sold your information sucker but in about 4 weeks we will opt you out of future sharing.

Moral of the story, read the junk mail you get from HSBC, as it most likely will inform you that they have no honor and will betray you in anyway possible to grow their enterprise. But only if it could benefit you.

DONT DO BUSINESS WITH HSBC BANK NEVADA!

Free resource to promote your Utah web site

Looking for ways to get links to your utah web site? How about a free search engine marketing resource for getting some copy up and linked back to your site. Utahwebdesign.net offers an "add your utah site" tool to do just that. No strings attached, they won't sell your info or market to you. More at utahwebdesign.net

Your web site must be owned and operated in the state of Utah though, and must not be under construction. Who would want to promote a site that is under construction anyway.

Marketing Utah web design requires constant change

Marketing Utah web site design requires constant change.

Red Olive , a creative group in Utah, has spent over seven years developing it's service offering which includes designing web sites in Utah and even international clients. Our initial offering was all programming and web work back in the 90's but quickly added new talent to the roster. As we picked up specialized team members we grew the offering to print design, and then to media buying.

In an attempt to market websites on the Internet you find tactics that you think will work best for your clients. You study the their competitors and how they are currently marketing online and try to do something different that they have not yet thought of. Marketing a services company compared to hard goods is quite different in nature so it requires a much different approach. There are volumes of information on the web about making your site content accessible and people telling you to go submit a Google XML sitemap and many other various chores. Do you really think Google needs an XML sitemap or does it make anxious site owners feel as though they are working towards their goal of total web domination? The only true fact about search engine marketing is that it has and will change constantly and no one approach will last forever. The Google boys are smart, they need to be, and will force you to evolve and adapt to change. Trial and error is actually a strategy of sorts, you find what works for the time and use it. Study the top three listings in Yahoo or Google on a regular basis and attempt to reverse engineer the how and why they achieved the ranking they did. This will open some interesting dialog, especially over the next few years when the demand grows out of control. First page dominance will be harder and harder to obtain as more companies come online and hire so-called SEO experts to market their sites. I love change so it will be a blast to see what transpires in the coming years.

Why do the marketing guys reference hits?

Everyone who has ever run a web server and worked with web statistics knows that "hits" don't really matter. Beware of a marketing firm pushing web site hits in their statistics, it's not an accurate assessment of your traffic. "Visitor Sessions" is what you should be looking for.

Hits are misleading by nature because they count each and every file on a page like images and the page itself. For example you can have a single web page with 20 images on it, resulting 21 hits. Easy to see why marketing firms like to use hits instead, really easy to pass them off as unique visitors too since the term hits was coined in the early days of the internet and not to mention publicised to hell on television.

My company, Red Olive a creative firm in Utah, has used a multitude of stats programs to track search engine optimization efforts for websites. Most fell short in that they weren't real-time or couldn't get to logs on other servers "easily". WebTrends is overpriced and under delivers, but if you like customizing your own software and are looking for a good base app to start with, I suggest surfstatslive.com. Written in easy to manage ASP, just pull up the code and modify it to meet your needs and skin it. Works awesome for us and has all the features, including PPC campaign tracking, sales funnels, etc. Or you can always use the FREE Google analytics , gets the job done and is totally no cost.

If you are interested in search engine optimization, check out our red olive corporate blog site for server and creative coding tips.

Red Olive Design Launches new website after four years of the same old site

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Matthew Moeller
TOLL FREE: 1-866-RED-OLIVE
Email: pr@redolivedesign.com

RED OLIVE DESIGN LAUNCHES ALL NEW WEBSITE AFTER 4 YEARS!

Red Olive Design, a Utah web design services company launched a new corporate website last week. Besides the updated look, the website offers much more information and is far easier to use compared to the last version. There is an all new corporate blog site setup to help clients and other Internet searchers find information on not only helpful web developer tips but a rare glimpse of the inner workings of the company. Dynamic news updates and RSS feeds to help make the information more accessible too.
Red Olive also introduced a new project management system where clients can keep tabs on their project during the development stages every step of the way, with email updates every time there is file posted, a note entered, or a milestone met. One more way Red Olive is striving to exceed the expectations of clients and open channels communication.
The new website also offers an updated portfolio showcasing some recent work in print, web design, interactive, and identity. Stop by redolivedesign.com and check out the latest updates. In the coming weeks we will be adding all the new radio creative section highlighting our most recent radio spots produced.

###

For more information go to http://www.redolivedesign.com/ or call Justin Wilde at1-866-RED-OLIVE