Lotus Marketplace

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lotus Marketplace was a database program developed jointly by Lotus Development Corporation (as the software developer) and Equifax (as the information provider), announced on April 10, 1990, but cancelled shortly after on January 23, 1991, mainly due to massive protests and lawsuit threats, citing invasion of privacy. This program was rather large (even by today's standards), as it was supposed to be released on several CD-ROMs.

Lotus Marketplace was to be released in two editions, Lotus Marketplace: Business (containing information about businesses) and Lotus Marketplace: Households (containing information about peoples and households).

The Business edition of this program contained information about 7 million businesses in the United States, just like Yellow Pages, but could quickly and flexibly be searched. Unlike the Households edition, this edition was not so controversial and was released in October 1990, but unfortunately was cancelled along with the Households edition, citing profitability reasons.

The Households edition of this program is so infamous because it was supposed to contain private information about 120 million people and 80 million households in the United States. Information such as names, addresses, telephone numbers, demographic information, and prior purchasing behavior were contained in the program and could be searched quickly and flexibly. This program was strongly protested by many, citing customer privacy issues (because using this program telemarketers could get hundreds of names and addresses, and mass mail those addresses without addressees' discretion).