Trust is good, control is better – systematically monitoring campaigns by means of dummy addresses

Well maintained, up-to-date customer addresses are worth hard cash in the proverbial sense. This also entails the risk that certain criminal minds are motivated to obtain improper possession of this valuable information. Measures which either prevent data misuse or make it as difficult as possible have top priority, of course. As a result, companies not only protect their "capital" in the form of customer addresses but also the legitimate interests of their customers from the improper use of their stored data.
Nevertheless, there are cases, in which customer data has to be made accessible to third parties, at least temporarily, e.g. service providers for the implementation of a mailing campaign or call centres for the implementation of a telephone campaign. Dummy addresses present themselves here as an effective way of checking that the trust invested in the service provider is not misplaced.

Dummy addresses are addresses in the database which conceal an actual person of trust. As far as possible, the person behind the dummy address should have no readily identifiable relationship with the company using the dummy addresses (no employees or members of their families). Several different dummy addresses should be inserted in the database. These should be geographically distributed over the market area.

The following prerequisites must be met for a dummy address to fulfil its purpose:

• Firstly, it must be guaranteed that the dummy address can actually be delivered to, i.e. that the respective person can be reached via the dummy address.
   

• Secondly, the dummy address must be changed in such a way that the use of

      the dummy address can be clearly established and, in particular, that the origin
      can be traced. The first name and surname are especially suitable for disguising.
      The street, postcode and post town are ruled out, because the disguise would be
      removed by a postal validation. The addition of a second fictitious first name is a
      possibility for first names. Last names can be made unidentifiable through fictitious
      hyphenated names.

      Examples for the disguise of dummy addresses:

• The person of trust may not use the form of the dummy address for communication

      (e.g. ordering) with other companies.

• The person of trust reports any contact via the dummy address to the contractor.

Although a dummy address system is not easy to set up, this task is indispensable for sensitive data. Just the knowledge that the database is monitored by means of dummy addresses can prevent data theft and make a decisive contribution to detecting improper use of the data.

A new set of dummy addresses must be added each time customer or prospect data is given to a third party. Only in such a way can traceability be guaranteed

The listguard function can be used to insert dummy addresses in an address database at any desired point of a DQ Batch Suite processing chain. It can thereby be guaranteed that unadulterated dummy addresses safely enter the generated output database without falling victim to one of the preceding processing steps or being altered.

Incidentally, the quality and time required for a mailing to actually reach its recipients can also be monitored by means of dummy addresses.

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