Don't leave your own magazine copy on the plane...

A while back we carried a curious item about a subscriber copy of Maclean's magazine being bought at a Bangkok, Thailand newsstand. How did it get halfway round the world, wondered Andrew Batt,the editor of The Bangkok Bugle blog? And what, he asked about the privacy implications of him being able to use the subscriber info on the label? He was able to buy other North American titles as well, including Business Week, the New Yorker and Sports Illustrated. Well, he now says after further exploration, the mystery has been solved:

Yesterday I had an email reply to my inquiry from a San Francisco-based subscriber of The New Yorker confirming he had left this copy on a recent Thai Airways flight. As others have mentioned Thai Airways' crew and other airport staff apparently collect magazines and sell them on to retailers at the market. This is backed up by my own discovery of magazines being sold with Thai Airways labels still attached.

The subscriber was also rightly concerned how I had managed to contact him. Googling his name and address from the information on the label provided an email contact, however that information could also allow me access to the customer service section of three of the four magazines mentioned above. From there I could, if I so wish, amend delivery addresses, cancel subscriptions, order additional copies, etc.
It's clearly a data security issue and publishers should be doing more to enhance security of their subscriber data. Subscribers need to take care of their private data as well however it should not be possible to buy a magazine off the street and, armed with only the information on the address label, purport to be that person.