They sent a mistargeted email. Wow.
A fair number of people who meet the known characteristics of your wife have children, thus it seems reasonable to send them a PSA pertaining to kids. It looks like a sensible email and it’s not a judgment or anything. I think the email could have been better qualified. But this whole things just smacks of hypersensitivity to perceived micro aggressions.
That said, I think it's really imprecise to infer whether someone has a child from their age, sex, and marital status. Regardless of how many 30-year-old married women in SE Railways' database show strong signs of having children (e.g., they regularly book child's fares), the consequence of incorrectly believing a woman has a child when they really don't is potentially really bad. How many infertile couples, recovering stillbirth mothers, or childfree advocates who complain eloquently enough to get to the front page of HN do you want to risk upsetting with this tone-deaf campaign email?
If privacy is the concern, there’s plenty to discuss about FB or Google who actually do target people based on personal and private insights. I think that ranting about this email is misplaced at best.
The ratio of useful mail to garbage in my mailbox is approaches 1:100, and email without regularly efforts to prune and filter is even worse.
This should not be okay.