Biovid & confidentiality question

[Guest guest]

Today I received an email from an employee of a company called Biovid that does marketing research for pharmaceutical companies. Below is a copy of most of the email. This email's subject header was titled "BioVid HIV Studies". I don't recall contacting this company in the past nor giving permission to anyone else or another agency to give my info. I could have, but I don't recall. However, my email address and well over 150 others (I stopped counting) who received this same message are clearly visible to me, as they are to every other recipient. I am upset about this and would like some perspective from others. I have sent an email to the employee as well as another one who was CC'd by the sender stating my concern and asking for the company's response. BTW, has

anyone heard of Biovid before?Thank you,Joe Email copy follows...My name is XXXX XXXX and I work for a company called

BioVid in Princeton, NJ. We conduct research for pharmaceutical

companies on several different therapeutic areas, including HIV. Therefore, we

frequently need to recruit HIV positive participants for studies. We have your contact

information because you contacted us through email or over the phone after you

saw an advertisement for our HIV study in the past. You would have seen our

advertisement either at your HIV center, doctor’s office, craigslist, or

in the paper. We would like to add you to our database of potential

participants for future studies on HIV. There are usually cash incentives for

successfully completing our surveys. Our research is often done either on the

phone, online, or in person in major cities throughout the country. If you are

interested in being in our database, please respond in an email or call me at 609

750 1400 x XXX answering the questions below:

1) Full Name:

2) Telephone

Number:

3) Home Address:

4) Gender:

5) Age:

6) Year you

contracted HIV:

7) How you contracted

HIV:

8) Current HIV

Treatments:

9) Past HIV

Treatments:

10) How you

heard about our HIV study:

If you do not wish to participate in our HIV studies in the

future, please respond “not interested†in the Subject line. If you

call and I am unavailable, please leave a message will all of your information

and I will add you to the database.

Thank you very much.