Affiliate Summit Sells Your Information

There was a post on the digital point forums from a newbie (1 post wonder) poster saying he had just purchased a list containing all attendees of the Affiliate Summit. The user also posted a link to a CSV file which was distributed to exhibitors of the event. The post was reported to the moderators/admins of Digital Point and being I am one I checked it out. I followed the link and downloaded the list... it contained names and home addresses of attendees of ASW 2007... My home address was listed as was many other affiliates. Being a moderator I deleted the link. Shawn Collins tried to use the ole "but everyone is doing it" defense in that thread:

As is standard with any conference, Affiliate Summit makes the snail mail addresses available to exhibitors at each conference.

I was pretty surprised at this. I was not familiar with this "conference standard" of giving out all attendees mailing addresses to Sponsors and Exhibitors. Later Shawn commented in the thread (which i merged with the first):

Also, during the registration process for Affiliate Summit, there is an option to opt-out of having the snail mail address shared with exhibitors.

The CSV that I downloaded from that link there are 1586 (I think only 1500 attendees at that event back then so that's weird.. ) names on the list with attendees personal information. I guess those people missed that part or did not care about their info being distributed. I have been to pretty much every conference in the industry (I think) and I had never heard of these lists of attendees being sold (or included with price of sponsorship/exhibitor however you want to say it). So I reached out to the head of basically every conference I have ever been to.... pointed them to that thread and asked them their conferences policy on distributing conference goers private information. Danny Sullivan (SMX Conferences):

Hey no we don't do this. We do not share attendees personal data.

Kevin M. Ryan (Vice President, Search Engine Strategies Conference):

Our policy is that we do not sell, rent, barter or otherwise release delegate information.

Brett Tabke (Webmasterworld PubCon Conferences):

We have never given out so much as one name, email, or postal address to any one. We have no plans to do so in the future.

Rick Calvert (BlogWorld & New Media Expo) :

Exhibitors are allowed to collect attendee data at the show either by collecting business cards, or using what we call a "lead retrieval unit" (the little machines exhibitors use to scan your badge). Again this is only done with the attendees consent.

To be fair to Shawn I am sure this is all perfectly legal and somewhere in his terms of service he has spelled out that he has the right to sell your info (or to give it to paying sponsors/exhibitors). I guess I will look for the "opt out" box from now on. Maybe you guys are wiser then me and opted out from having your info sold ?