Bland Farms Privacy Policy: What It Shares With Ad Networks

calendar Oct 16, 2026 / · 8 min read · identity theft catalog privacy bland farms mailing list opt-out direct mail consumer privacy direct marketing general security ad tracking vidalia onions  ·
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A Privacy Promise With a Built-In Exception: What Bland Farms Actually Shares

An older shopper who recently placed an order with Bland Farms answers a call that already contains details only a legitimate seller should have — the order number, the ship date, the name on the account — followed by a request to "verify" a card number before the shipment can go out. That exact pattern sits inside a number the FBI tracks every year: in 2023, victims over 60 reported $3.4 billion in losses to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, across 101,068 complaints, with an average loss of $33,915 — up roughly 11% on 2022. The IC3 report is an aggregate tally of all reported elder fraud; it does not name Bland Farms or any food company, and nothing here suggests this scenario has happened to an actual Bland Farms customer. What it shows is the mechanism: a caller holding real account details is far more convincing, which is why how a company says it handles that data — not just whether a scam call ever happens — is worth reading closely.

Bland Farms's privacy policy opens with the commitment most mail-order sellers make: "We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy." Read past that sentence and the exceptions arrive quickly. The policy, last updated May 5, 2025, names service providers who handle the website on the company's behalf, and then names two outside companies by their own products: Google, through Google Analytics, and Microsoft, through Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising. Both get access not just to traffic counts but to how a visitor moves through the site — behavioral metrics, heatmaps and session replay, in the policy's own words — and the policy says plainly that "by using our site, you agree that we and Microsoft can collect and use this data."

That distinction matters for anyone ordering online. A "we never share" promise and a "we share with named ad partners for advertising" disclosure are two different things wearing the same first sentence, and a reader skimming the headline promise can miss the second. Neither detail says anything criminal is happening — ad-tech partnerships like this are common across e-commerce. What it does mean is that your activity on BlandFarms.com, and the order and contact details tied to it, sit with more than one company before the box of onions ships.

A Vidalia onion grower in Glennville, Georgia collects the same name, address, phone and email as any other online store when you use its website — which is exactly why the scenario above is worth taking seriously regardless of the seller's size. For the wider mechanics of how mail-order customer data connects to identity-theft exposure across categories, see Catalog Mail and Identity Theft Risk.

How Bland Farms uses your address — and who else gets it

Bland Farms

Bland Farms grows Vidalia sweet onions in Georgia.

Visit Bland Farms →

The policy lists what it may collect while you use the site: name, email address, telephone number, address, and "Log Data" — your IP address, browser type and the pages you visited, gathered automatically on every visit. Cookies collect additional information the policy doesn't itemize beyond saying they carry "a small amount of data" and an identifier.

Three categories of outside party get access, by the policy's own account:

  • Service providers who help run the website. The policy says these companies "have access to your personal information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose."
  • Google and Microsoft, through Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising. Google Analytics tracks and reports site traffic, and the policy says Google "may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network." The Microsoft partnership is described as capturing "behavioral metrics, heatmaps, and session replay" to "improve and market" Bland Farms' products, with that same usage data captured through "first and third-party cookies" and applied to "site optimization, fraud/security purposes, and advertising."
  • Law enforcement, where the policy says it "will disclose your Personal Information where required to do so by law or subpoena."

What the policy does not describe is a separate arrangement to rent or sell its mailing list to unrelated third-party marketers — the kind of disclosure some catalog companies spell out explicitly. That's a meaningfully different practice from the ad-tech sharing above, which is about tracking behavior for advertising, not handing your address to other merchants. The policy covers information collected "while operating our websites," so it doesn't say how phone or mail orders are handled.

What to do: opt out + protect yourself

  1. Ask Bland Farms directly what its mailing-list practice is. The policy's own contact channel is the place to ask whether phone, mail or in-store orders are handled the same way as site-collected data, and to exercise the rights it describes: under the CCPA, California residents can ask what categories of data were collected, request deletion, and opt out of sale; under the GDPR, EEA residents can request access, correction or deletion. Bland Farms' contact page lists 1-800-VIDALIA (1-800-843-2542), a fax at 912-654-1330, and a mailing address at 1126 Raymond D. Bland Road, Glennville, Georgia 30427 — use it to ask for removal from print or email marketing and to raise a data-rights request.

  2. Turn off the ad-tracking the policy discloses. The policy points to the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on to stop sharing activity data with Google Analytics. It doesn't name a separate self-serve opt-out for the Microsoft Clarity and Advertising partnership in the text quoted above, which is another reason to raise it directly with the company through the contact channel in step 1.

  3. Cut the rest of the catalog and mailing-list volume. The Federal Trade Commission's junk-mail guidance describes DMAchoice, run by the Association of National Advertisers, where you choose which catalogs and other mail you want. It stops most, but not all, promotional mail, for a $6 fee online or $7 by mail, and the registration lasts 10 years.

  4. Opt out of prescreened credit and insurance offers. These travel through a separate system from any single retailer's list. The FTC says you can opt out for five years or permanently at OptOutPrescreen or by calling 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688); the permanent option is only complete once you sign and return the form you're sent after starting the request.

  5. Shred anything with your full name, address and an order or account number before you recycle it.

  6. Consider a credit freeze with all three credit bureaus. A freeze stops a new account from being opened in your name, including by you, until you lift it — a baseline protection that doesn't depend on what any single company does with its list. An identity-monitoring service is a separate, paid layer on top of that; neither one stops mail by itself.

Signs your information has been shared

Because Bland Farms' policy doesn't disclose selling or renting its mailing list to outside marketers, a rise in unrelated catalogs isn't direct evidence that Bland Farms passed your address along — it means your address is circulating somewhere, and steps 3 and 4 above are the response regardless of the source. Seeing food, gift or gourmet ads follow you across other websites after visiting BlandFarms.com is the ad-tracking partnership working as the policy describes, not a sign of a breach.

The warning sign worth acting on is a call, text or letter that pairs a real detail — a recent order, your name, even the fact that you're a Bland Farms customer — with a request for something sensitive: a card number, a Social Security number, or a "confirmation" payment. An accurate detail only proves the sender has a record, not that they're legitimate. Hang up and call Bland Farms back using the number on its own contact page, never a number the caller supplies.

Frequently asked questions

Does Bland Farms sell my information? Its privacy policy says "we will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy," and the exceptions it names are service providers, Google and Microsoft Advertising partnerships, and legally compelled disclosures — not a separate sale or rental of its mailing list to outside marketers.

What does the Microsoft partnership actually track? The policy says Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising capture behavioral metrics, heatmaps and session replay from your visit, used for site improvement, marketing, site optimization, fraud and security, and advertising.

How do I stop Bland Farms' marketing? Use the contact details on its contact page — 1-800-843-2542 or the Glennville, Georgia mailing address — and ask specifically to be removed from print and email marketing, and to have any data-rights request processed under the CCPA or GDPR.

Does opting out of Google Analytics stop all the tracking? The policy names a Google Analytics opt-out add-on specifically. It doesn't describe a parallel self-serve opt-out for the Microsoft Clarity and Advertising partnership, so that one needs to be raised directly with the company.

Is a Vidalia onion order really an identity-theft risk? On its own, a small one — a name, address and order history held by a grower whose policy discloses ad-tracking partnerships rather than mailing-list sales. The risk builds across every company holding your details, which is why the broader opt-outs and a credit freeze matter more than any single order.

References

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