Originally posted by mee
Think RichA has a good point. And he doesn't seem to be under the allusion of conspiracy theories.. just reality to what happens with personal data these days. Even to fill out a Mens NCAA Tournament bracket with ESPN you had to provide your name, address, and phone number to enter the prize pool. And the possible combinations in that were over 9.2 Quintillion (though one article claimed that is if you picked randomly for every. single. game. which most people don't -- the real odds would be closer to 128 Billion haha).
And there were still over 11 million brackets submitted.
Even if someone submitted multiple brackets.. and the average per person was 4 brackets (which is extraordinarily generous), then there were still almost 2.8 million people's personal information collected (the fiiiine print stated you agree they can contact you about special deals via phone, text, and/or mail).
That is just how the internet rolls today and it is better to be safe than sorry, I find. Contacting the winners via PM should be sufficient for requesting further information to ship out their prizes. Not that I think Adam is up to nefarious schemes with our datas.. but the less info you provide someone, the better.
Well all I can say is for the contest here an entrant only needs to be a member. So the only information that will be required to enter the contest will be whatever was asked for and given when a member registers here, which, if memory serves, is only your e-mail address.
Should one be fortunate enough to win one of the great contests that Adam has, then all that is asked for is an address to send the prize to. For me, I live in a very rural area, and the post office does not deliver to my home, so I have a PO box. In the February contest I picked up a couple of the daily prizes, and one of the grand prizes. Adam contacted me each time that I won and asked where to send the items. For all he knows I didn't give him my real name, and the PO box could have been rented under a fictitious name. No other information was asked for or given, and I was not compelled to concede to allowing contact for specials deals via phone, text, and/or mail.
I think the difference between this forum and ESPN is the fact that ESPN is a multi-million dollar commercial enterprise and Pentaxforums is an extension of Adam's photography hobby, and I would venture to guess that it operates at a fraction of the annual budget of ESPN.
Now let's get those photos out and ready for the contest!