Big brother is not the government

Here's a cut and paste from a proposal that I am writing for a client. I think that I am going to recommend against it, just because it's freaking me out.

This database is the real power of the company. The way that this works, is that we would send our entire 120,000 name mailing list to the company. 95% of the households would already be members of the company's database. The company tracks an average of 20 purchases a year for every household in their database.

Based on each household's buying habits, the company would rank our mailing list from 1 to 120,000 on an individual household basis, from most likely to buy to least likely.

We could then make a more logical determination of who to mail to and who's not worth it.

Finally and of most value, the company can create leads: households that while not on our list, are in the right demographic and are making similar purchases.

The pricing is based on not how many households you submit, but how many you get back. The rate is $40/1,000. So for example, if we sent them 120,000 names we could request the top 50,000 of ours back, plus another 20,000 of "new" names that are good leads, but not clients, for 70,000 names or $2,800.

They're tracking the purchases of 95% of the households in America.