But until then they will probably prosper, as no one ever seems to get sentences for leaking/loosing/selling private information.

I would hope that there are legal consequences...this is a huge breach of trust, and there are quite a few laws in place to protect children online from marketers and predators, and these people are both.

I would also hope that they have trouble sleeping at night...but I may be giving them too much credit.

Can anyone think of a dumber/more offensive thing done by marketers?

this one pissed a lot of people off, though i thought it was clever.

http://gothamist.com/2007/08/16/hangups_about_s.php

It's a good example of a different type of offensiveness. There is a definite difference between the offensiveness of a tasteless joke and something that strongly goes against our inbuilt desire to protect children. Also, it hanger ad seems inherently less dumb in that it was designed to generate controversy, because (most) attention is good attention. There is nothing good about the PR generated by the censorship company because there is nothing controversial about it; everyone thinks it is a bad idea.

Marketing hell shudder