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Collecting Customer Contact Info for COVID-19 Contact Tracing? Here’s Why You Can’t Use that Info for Marketing

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

To help with COVID-19 contact tracing, many businesses are collecting customers’ names and contact information. If you collect customers’ information for the purpose of contact tracing, you can’t then use that information to send them marketing materials unless you have their consent to do so.

Customers may be turned off if you say you are collecting information for public health reasons and then send them an ad. It may deter people from providing their contact information for public health tracking if they think it will be used for marketing purposes. There are also privacy and anti-spam laws that may apply.

To learn more about your responsibilities under privacy laws, see:
Canada’s Anti-spam Legislation
Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act