Every MSC i have signed up with guarantees my personal information is confidential.
They promise they will not give out my email. Mysteriously i keep getting emails pertaining to mystery shopping from people and companies who shouldn't have my information. If i didnt give it to them then how did they get it?!?!? HHMMMM??
If "someone" would stop giving out my email maybe i would stop getting offers for check cashing scams. Makes me wonder if my SSN is safe.

My take on this is that there are some legitimate contacts and I suspect these offer nothing beyond your general location (city/state) and email address. With the Prophet reporting system, they do provide your email contact information to companies that sign up with them but you still need to activate the new company for access. My sense is that schedulers also share information with their new clients and frankly I do not know how much of my data the scheduler has access to unless I have specifically signed up with their scheduling company.

We have been concerned for a while that there seems to be a common denominator between shoppers who have received check cashing scams and shoppers who have signed up with Shadow Shopper. Are you perhaps signed up with them?

I don't know about any one else, but I have been contacted by other companies that do MSing, but they are up front as to how they got my name. Example: "I got your name from Narms and we have a shop in your area and would like you to complete it for us. You may go to our web site,.... fill out the application and have all of the information in writing."
This has happened to me several times. As long as you are with companies like Narms, or the Sassie one, you may be passed around to another company. Or at least I have been

I hvae been contacted too. Narms is the culprit, BUT; has anyone read the privacy agreement? I don't. My bad, but I just click AGREE... I can only read so much fine print.

Certainly with many of the MS registrations there is a question about whether you would like your information shared with other MS companies. I ALWAYS mark 'yes' on the assumption that these folks are not sharing information with just anybody and that they are sharing contact information and possibly basic demographics to solicit signups, not passing out everything in the data base.

I am not signed up with NARMS, I have never gotten a scam solicitation to my shopping email or by regular mail and the only junk mail I get in my shopping email ties back pretty specifically to a shopper who got my shopping email and thought it was wonderful to include me all the 'cute' and 'inspirational' email chains with hundreds of names that spammers could harvest.

What's the scoop on MSPs providing shopper identities to their clients? I've had two clients'corporate offices, who changed MSPs, email me (to my shopping email address) the names of their new provider. It was a bit unsettling, as we're supposed to be unknown.

That is a new one on me. Is it possible that the information was blind shipped from the MSP on behalf of the client? The reason I ask is because I received a letter of apology and a gift card from the corporate office of a restaurant where I had a nightmare shop. It turned out that when there was a truely wretched shop experience it was client corporate policy to send out the apology and gift card in a corporate letterhead envelope to the MSP and the MSP then addressed the envelope on to me. Another disquieting event was that a shopper friend received a call from the manager at a shop she had done. In exploring it with him, he had figured out based on time and detail who she was from the credit card receipt and looked her up in the phone book. He was not upset but wanted to ask her a few questions about things that were not covered by the shop.

I'm not sure how I would know if it was in the blind. The "To" and "From" were identifying. Maybe corporate knows who we are, but not the locations shopped?

Regarding your friend who received a call from the manager - I've always realized that loyalty cards and debit/credit cards would allow the stores to trace back to us, but in response to my questions to a couple of MSPs, they filter out detailed identifiers such as account numbers and exact times from our reports. To think otherwise is indeed disquieting.

And the more unique your situation, the more memorable you are. If I recall correctly, the shopper was taking a kid in for a haircut. There was signing in to be done and that needed to match up with the credit card. Apparently hers was the only kid haircut in the approximate time period.

But there has been a real breech that I know of when there was a Business Verification. The target did not appear for the appointment. They then called the cell phone number they had been given and the phone was turned off or some such. So they called the MSP, who gave the target the shoppers home telephone. (It may have been the other way around--target given home number by shopper and MSP handing out the cell. But in any case, the MSP gave out a phone number they had no right to give out.)

I feel comfortable that most MSPs do a decent job of securing our information. There are notable exceptions--such as when Datatron was closed and their computers were impounded by the Sherriff and sold at auction to satisfy unpaid rent, at least theoretically with our personal data on the drives. But I figure we need to function in life with a fair amount of identity threat from any place our data can be compromised--banks, credit reporting agencies, internet hacking, trusted agencies where some fool takes the data home on a laptop that is stolen, etc.

Maybe there are instances like the above but no spam.

In my nine months of shopping, I have used a unique shopping email address to sign up with about 70-90 companies including MSPA and Shadow Shopper. I can't remember one spam to this address. I do get unexpected emails from MSCs because I have allowed MSPA and Shadow Shopper to share my email with schedulers.

If this is true of all shoppers, then they aren't selling the email addresses to spammers.

Anyone else have a comment?

I have two email accounts, one I use for MS the other is for personal stuff. The MS account get mystery shopping spam all the time. How do they know I mystery shop? How do they know I use that email account for mystery shopping. That email has only been given to MSPA,this forum and companies I shop for. Somebody gave it to the spammers because they are offering me the opportunity of a lifetime to shop for them and they will pay me by check $200 a week. Sounds like a great deal I could really use the money. I am glad they found me I'm gonna be rich. Oh yeah and that 80 bazzilion dollars or pounds or something I'm getting from Nigeria.

Did you sign up with Shadow Shopper or some other pay to play outfit? My business email has only been compromised by chain email from another shopper and the spam I get is all buying 'university' degrees, viagra and fake watches.

Re: personal info being accessible by schedulers.
In my (limited) experience, SS #s are ALWAYS x'd out. Any reputable msp would ensure that this was done. The personal info I can view is a shopper's name, email, location and writing sample.

On another topic, my husband just received one of those scam letters and checks and I KNOW that he is not involved in anything ms related. It was a hoot to actually see one of those up close and personal. VERY official looking, I might add!