> ... a result of a mailing list rented through a third-party provider
This is analogous to someone looking at the obituaries in a newspaper and cross-referencing the phone book.
Which is still ugly.
Except when it's automated, as the top comment said, it gets dehumanised. Presumably there is a real human being reading the obituary and cross-referencing, who would be sensitive enough not to include that information.
This is disgusting.
I am inclined to agree. Presumably there is some text processing algorithm that matches the name and other entities that co-occur with high probability. In this case, the man's name probably co-occurred with that phrase. Abhorrent and sad.