Today, A non-MajesticSEO newsletter was inadvertently sent to one of Majestic’s opt-in lists. It was not a Majestic SEO newsletter and I personally apologize for the error. I have emailed those people on the list that had not unsubscribed as a result to apologize directly.

This error does give us a chance to address our privacy policy, which we updated in December and – in doing so – hopefully reassure all our customers that MajesticSEO’s privacy policy is as robust as anyone’s in the industry.

First – what didn’t happen

No part of your account was accessed. The mailing list server is entirely separate to the Majestic SEO data servers. The list was not “sold” to any third party and will never be sold to any third party. The newsletter system administrator just inadvertently checked a box to include the wrong list. We will now be looking to put MajesticSEO’s mailing list system onto its own server, entirely independent of any non-majesticSEO lists. Generally, other list owners cannot access our list, but this was done at the news list system administrator level.

Now Some More about our Marketing Relationship

Many in the industry know that there is a marketing relationship between MajesticSEO and Receptional. As part of this relationship, both parties consider it essential that MajesticSEO’s clients do not feel that another agency can see the domains in their MajesticSEO account. This is and will remain the case – and includes me not having access to any account control panels other tan my own and a demo account. I do have the ability to set up subscriptions for clients and add credits, but cannot see any client data whatsoever. Only two full time employees at MajesticSEO have this ability.

Some More About Our Privacy Policies

We asked our lawyers to review the wording on our privacy policy in December. Without using legal speak, I want to describe some of the procedures and protection we have in place.

1. Our link data and your account are only hosted on Majestic-12’s own servers. We do not use Amazon’s servers or other server system designed for large data sets.

2. When logged in, you will be in SSL at all times.

3. Any third party systems are hived off onto separate machines and sub-domains. For example, this blog uses Wordpress, but as this is third party software (and open source as well) we have hosted it on a separate sub-domain and on a non-critical server to limit any damage from a hack.

4. We do not use Google analytics. Indeed, we currently have NO third party analytics system code on our site. Whilst this may change in future, it is likely that we will either build our own system or use a system that we know cannot send data to a third party and will also store our own analytics data internally. That said – if you use toolbars, then you can possibly be tracked through that or other means of your own making.

5. We do not store or record credit card details. We never see credit card details. We currently use Paypal, although even this is constantly under review.

Lastly, a big Thankyou to those that have sent in kind comments

I won’t embarrass those that were kind enough to console me when I sent out my follow up email. They have been coming in as I have been writing this post. I thought I would share a few with you. If you wrote any of these and would like credit, you know how to find me!

Dixon, Mistakes happen and it always a good judge of a business of how well it handles them.  I appreciate the way you have handled this one.

That was my assumption, thanks for confirming. No worries. Carry on.

Relax buddy. It’s a quick reach to the delete key.

Hi there, Well I did wonder why I received that email, but it made for pretty good reading in any case and gave me some encouragement to expand our site and newsletter. Apology accepted!

Don’t beat yourself up over this, Dixon.  It was an honest mistake.  And I actually found information of interest in the mistaken newsletter!  I assumed it was an error of some sort, and it’s no big deal.

Hello Mr. Jones, thank you for the information. Apology is accepted, nothing happened.

Hi Dixon, What a handsome apology! Thank you but I’m not aware of any unwelcome email.

Dear members of Majestic SEO, Thank you for the information, Nowadays it is not usual that corporations apologies for its mistakes. Anyway, i understand perfectly what happened, so nevermind.

It was not all good, though. I should apologize again to the two that responded less favourably.

Dixon.