Breach of Privacy

All TAC Members will have recently received a mailing from Mitsubishi Estate Company , "on behalf of the American Club", that in part was gathering marketing info for MEC's Condos at the new TAC Azabudai site.

It would appear that the mailing from MEC has been enabled via access to private information, i.e. names and addresses of Club Members. Further, as the cover note states this mailing is "with the support of the Tokyo American Club", the Management/leadership of the Club almost certainly provided MEC with your information. It is also possible, though unlikely, that MEC got hold of a Membership Directory somehow without management/leadership knowledge and used it for this purpose. In either case, Members private information has been shared with, and used by MEC for their own commercial purposes.

Apart from the potential illegality of such an action, this is also a clear breach of the regulation restricting the use of the membership directory information "to the exclusive and private noncommercial use of members" ( see p.1 of the Directory). This regulation has been enforced in the past, and was the basis of disciplinary action against a Member.

You can make a formal complaint, as provided for in the Rules, to the General Manager. This is up to each individual member should this be of concern.

It will take more than one Member to act in order for the Management and Board of the Club to take this matter seriously and stop sharing our private data with MEC and other organizations that come knocking.

This apparent breach of our privacy should not be allowed to go unnoticed.