This article is more than 1 year old
Dick Smith database, web store sold to Kogan
Receivers promise privacy will be respected
Australian online retailer Kogan has announced it's going to buy the online properties of the failed Dick Smith Electronics, chiefly because it reckons the brand retains enough recognition to make it worth the effort.
Well: there's also the matter of a customer database, and here, the story gets interesting, because users were fearful that the sale process would involve mass privacy invasion.
That led to all manner of bad advice flying around the Internet, from recommendations to delete accounts outright to adding rubbish information to accounts, as if database versioning and backup snapshots wouldn't exist.
Choice Australia even set up an “opt out” campaign site here.
It turns out, after all, that receivers Ferrier Hodgson understand privacy law, stating that:
- All data is going to be handled in accordance with Australian and New Zealand privacy law;
- Customers will have the chance to remove their information from the database prior to the sale;
- Customers who signed up with the online store after the receivership began (on 4 January) won't be included in the sale.
Kogan will start operating the online stores from June 1.
Fairfax reports that online operations only accounted for around eight per cent of Dick Smith Electronics' turnover.
Even so, Ferrier Hodgson reported “aggressive” bidding for the online store, because the database also includes a million individuals that were part of the DSE loyalty program.
Alas for the company's bricks-and-mortar operations, Kogan has no interest in the physical stores. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
