Channel 5, the YouTube channel hosted by Andrew Callaghan, said it gave a list of its email subscribers to Hunter Biden, the former president’s son, who went on to promote his new memecoin, a move that a data privacy expert told 404 Media is likely illegal in some jurisdictions.
Callaghan has repeatedly interviewed Biden on camera. Apparently over the cross of that source and interviewer relationship, Biden “asked if he could use our mailing list whenever he launched a new product,” according to a statement posted by Channel 5 to X on Monday. The statement said that Channel 5 did actually provide Biden with real user data: “We provided him a simple csv sheet from our email list to help him expand his audience.”
And although Channel 5 said in a follow-up statement that “emails from Hunter’s team have not gone out to any of our public subscribers,” sharing the data at all has understandably sparked a huge backlash.
It’s also probably illegal.
“Assuming that the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] does apply, and on the basis of this privacy notice and the language used to sign up to a newsletter, I am struggling to see how providing a list of email addresses of newsletter subscribers to a third party for direct marketing purposes is consistent with the GDPR,” Neil Brown, a data protection lawyer with Decoded Legal, told 404 Media in an email. The GDPR is the European Union’s broad data protection legislation.
It’s not entirely clear which email list Channel 5 is referring to in its statements, but people can sign up for the company’s newsletter at the bottom of both its members’ website and its merch store. The privacy policy of that first site says that under California’s “Shine the Light” law, “California residents may request certain information regarding our disclosure of your information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes.” The privacy policy then says, “We do not disclose your information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes.”
Giving Hunter Biden a copy of your subscribers’ email addresses so he can expand his audience is the same as giving your users’ data to third parties for direct marketing purposes.
“In terms of the mailing list, it appears to be a very simple sign-up, with no information beyond joining a newsletter mailing list to ‘get a sneak peak of upcoming films and much more’,” Brown added. “Someone signing up to that list has not, to my mind, consented to anything beyond being signed up for a mailing list.” That would include having your email address given to Hunter Biden.
Channel 5 did not respond to a request for comment.
Obviously, all of this is wild for several different reasons. The owners of media companies don’t usually hand over their subscriber list because those people presumably did not opt-in to having their contact information shared like that, and that email list is also a very important part of their own business.
Channel 5’s statement ends: “We wish Hunter the best, shout out to the homie.”
