Submitted by TheKeyboardKid t3_zsu5se in todayilearned
> Don't even get me started on those "Loyalty Rewards" cards from the grocery store and Target
That's why I just pool my purchases into [area code]-867-5309. Famous number that others can use too. It's all for the betterment of others, AND the companies get fed gibberish info from everyone.
And discounts on gas!
Unless you pay with cash for absolutely everything and are never caught on CCTV buying anything it doesn’t matter. I work on software that connects all those little dots.
I only barter in livestock and precious metals, have fun with that edge case
Dammit! Can’t let my boss see this or I’ll be responsible for creating this hellhole of a user story.
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Im a trader in kivas and trillium
John Oliver did a segment on Data Brokers a few months back that I found both horrifying and fascinating. The sophistication of the software needed to go through all of that data and connect those dots
It’s super interesting and as you said complex. Bit scared of it when I started at my company and now just resigned to the fact that it’s happening. From a technical side though it’s a very very interesting thing to work on, and how one company does it is very different from others. Some techniques are optimized for speed and real time queries while others are definitely more in depth and are built to provide extremely comprehensive data points.
Every Walmart sends many gigabytes of purchasing data back to HQ every day.
It'a kind of hilarious seeing the youngsters having no idea what that number is. I mean for christ sake I wasn't around in the 1960s but I've heard a fuckton of songs from that era, and Jenny was a #4 hit in 1981.
sigh I'm going to be singing that song to myself for the rest of the day now. Not sure whether you deserve an upvote or downvote for that.
Damn you Tommy Tutone!
In the 512 area code at Randall’s grocery store that number comes up as belonging to Rasputin. You can use it as gas stations and it often has 10-30 cents off in rewards per gallon.
Yes, gas discounts too!
I used to use 510-the-scam (510-843-7226). 510 because it was the HQ area code for Safeway, and I had friends that worked for corporate.
Because so many people used it you would get all sorts of extra discounts. You never knew if you'd get a free sandwich at the deli. It was fun. Eventually they shut that number down.
I went on holiday to the States recently, before I left I created myself a digital US phone number to use over there, the number for which had never before been used. For weeks that phone number never rang, no messages, nothing.
While in the States, I went to a Cheesecake Factory (for some cheesecake, obviously). There was a queue so I had to leave my phone number and wait to be texted or phoned or whatever.
I shit you not, just 10 minutes after giving them my phone number, the spam calls began. They kept going and going until I deactivated the number as soon as I was home. Much as I love cheesecake, fuck the Cheesecake Factory's data lack of protection.
You are absolutely correct. As soon as you used it at the Cheesecake Factory they knew it was an active number and they started in.
Not gonna lie, I'd still go back.
Fyi that number most likely was used before you.
Oh I didn’t know that either! Double TIL! Do you have a link to an article so not only I can see, but others can too?
>Have you ever wondered how junk mail follows you so easily when you move to a new address? How do credit card companies, catalogs, charities seeking money and everyone else all know when you have moved across town or across the country entirely?
>Whenever you fill out a change of address form with the United States Postal Service, the USPS adds your new details into a database of 160 million previous address changes over the past four years. The USPS has deals with data brokers to sell this data to anyone who pays, provided they have your old address. That means data firms cannot buy the address of Leroy Jones in Cincinnati, but can obtain his new address if they know where he used to live, which they usually do anyway.
And the USPS has a very poor history of safeguarding consumers data.
>The US Postal Service says it’s fixed a security weakness on usps.com that let anyone see the personal account info of its users, including usernames and street addresses. The open vulnerability was reportedly identified over a year ago by an independent researcher but USPS never patched it until this week, when Krebs on Security flagged the issue.
>The vulnerability included all 60 million user accounts on the website. It was caused by an authentication weakness in the site’s application programming interface (API) that allowed anyone to access a USPS database offered to businesses and advertisers to track user data and packages.
Source: USPS took a year to fix a vulnerability that exposed all 60 million users’ data
Thanks for the links to these articles…excellent info.
" Other companies incorporate the information into their comprehensive dossiers on almost all Americans (one leader in the field, Acxiom, recently said it would allow consumers to see their individual dossiers for the first time from the end of the summer)."
Is there any movement on this offer?
The latest one is every check out asking if you want them to email you receipt.
The anti-spam laws have an exception when contacting people with whom the company has an existing business relationship.
You bought something from them so they are in the clear to spam the fuck out of you.
That's why I have my junkmail@*****.com email. Sure, you can have it Ms. Clerk. Then they usually laugh.
They only sell the permanent move list. You can do a 6 month temporary move (and renew it for an additional 6 months) to avoid getting your address sold.
I was just going to post about the change of address thing. I just did mine and the correspondence they sent was filled with flyers for holiday sales from a random assortment of big companies. Like 20 of them alongside the one single side printed sheet of paper I was actually looking for.
Beyond that, the fact that you can see someone’s voter registration and such is all kinds of fucked
This is why I seed false mailing addresses to a lot of online stores. In fact, I do it to google constantly.
:3 No one knows where the fuck I am but the IRS, and even they needed to call twice to make sure I live at my address.
Hell I've PAID for my data to see if they knew anything relevant about me. And they don't. Nothing of interest. Basically "He likes video games and researching stuff" Past that it was either irrelevant information, or me being fucking 40. Which can from several alt accounts I made years back.
The IRS sells your data too lol.
I'm one of the engineers who set that up.
I’ve got the tar for this guy if someone else brings the feathers
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>Don't even get me started on those "Loyalty Rewards" cards from the grocery store and Target.
Don't forget those gas station locality cards that give you a discount on gas. Everyone wants to pay $0.10 less per gallon, until they realize you are only saving $1 for every 10 gallons you buy.
Hands over fake address cuz snail mail sux. Check mate
I love credit card mails though, some of the sign up bonuses can be better than what is currently available for everyone. Everything else I just toss, I use the usps emails to get a hint of what is coming.
Conversely, police and other law enforcement are skirting the 4th amendment by simply purchasing your information from data brokers.
They have been doing that for a long time.
Remember they don't care about the Constitution.. it's an inconvenience to them
>the Constitution.. it's an inconvenience to them
Kinda the whole point of the thing, ain't it? Inconveniencing the government?
Used to work, too
and people used to call for revolution when it didn't
At a prior job I utilized a service usually used for things like skip tracing. It is insane the amount of info available if you pay for it. A lifetime of addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, neighbors, aliases, relatives and all of their info.
It's a major part of business for third-party auto retailers (AutoZone, e.g.). They use the aggregate data on car ownership to determine which stores need to carry which parts in inventory based on the make, model, and age of cars in that sales region.
I would argue that's a good use of data.
Personally I enjoy targeted ads too, because it's things I'm actually interested in.
But we should all be getting paid to provide that data.
The challenge is that the amount of money that any individual’s information is worth is really small.
Eg, Meta’s CPMs are on the high end, the average for December is $14.18 (https://revealbot.com/facebook-advertising-costs).
So, if you’re one of the thousand people an advertiser wants to target, and even if you were to receive 100% of your portion of that value for your individual information, that comes out to… $0.01418. Your info would need to be bought over 7K times for you to get $100.
And of course, there’s no efficiency to buying any individual’s information as a one-off (that’s why they do it in thousands), so you NEED a broker to aggregate and be in the middle even if you wanted to sell your information, which would reduce your take even further and make the math even worse.
The reality is that the real value comes from scale as well as the detail and specificity of the information, and scale is generally the more important piece.
This is similar to what Blockbuster used to do when they first opened that made them so successful. They looked up demographics for the areas they opened stores in, and that determined what to stock. Area near a college campus? Less children’s movies. Suburban strip mall? More children’s movies. Etc.
If you want to see this in action shop for auto insurance. Give them your name and address and they will pull up every person in your address with a license and every vehicle.
Last year, I was shopping for insurance, and the person said something like "our photo shows 3 cars parked in front of your house, and you didn't say you own a Volvo." Well, that's because I dont fucking own a volvo, and why the hell do you have pictures of my house? They also asked who made the rail on the steps in my backyard (which you cant see from the street).
may not help now, but if you go onto google streetview to your place of residence, you can hit "Report a problem" and request a blurring of your house. they may request some proof of you living there but being google they probably already know that and I'd rather have my house be a blur for zillow to scrape if that's that case anyway.
As the Streisand effect goes, that won't do much for anyone who's less than passively curious. The second you blur it you attract more attention. Still fucking shady and predatory practices on their part.
Was the conversation over the course of several days? Usually they'll send someone for property photos and measurements to get an estimate and for rebuild value within a day.
Google My Sister Sam Rebecca Schaeffer. She was an actress who was murdered after a stalker got her address from the CA DMV.
I remember her ! And the law made to protect people after her murder......... is used to permit selling of PI. Sad irony.
I am so so sorry for your loss. I hope that someday er can get to a privacy centric society because of things like this. That’s just horrific knowing that things like that happen and I’m just so sorry.
Ohhh I was so tired and thought you meant that your sister was Rebecca Schaeffer - my bad!
On a totally unrelated note, would any of you be interested in extending your car’s warranty?
Are you the person who’s been trying to contact me for years now?
That is an invalid entry. Your car’s warranty is expiring…would you like to renew it?
Unsubscribe
In Rhode Island you can opt out by choosing "prohibit disclosure of personal information ". You have to pick it every time you renew anything.
It used to be free too, until they realized they could make money.
My (ex-)employer sold my data to an insurance company. I’m still amazed at the balls it took to sell your own employee’s personal information for a quick buck. And mildly disgusted.
I still get “special offer for X employees!” flyers in the mail, years after leaving the company.
Actually, they are federally limited to very specific uses of data sold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_Act
In Florida "emergency contact information and email addresses are restricted pursuant to Section 119.0712(2), Florida Statutes." And this "Non-personal information contained in motor vehicle and driver license records such as vehicular crash records, driving violations and driver status information are considered public information." https://www.flhsmv.gov/privacy-statement/driver-privacy-protection-act/
There is also a complaint form for Florida but I can tell you from personal experience it won't do anything. I got 2 email responses that were bollocks and phone call telling me "we don't handle these types of complaints" from FLHSMV when I complained a local car dealer sending direct marketing info. The dealer straight up told me they get their data from DMV but the guy from DMV said "probably not" and left with no recourse.
laughs in European
So that's how they know my warranty is expired.
Oh you would be amazed at how much data the government sells directly to the private sector.
State licensing agencies also sell your information. You can buy the home addresses of every physician, nurse, dietitian, etc who has a license in a state. Physician list is pretty expensive per name.
“5 dollas? It used to be 2 dollas a car. Thanks a lot”
Well $5 a car, 20 cars. Would you like a calculator?
And yet they pay their employees miserable rates and always don’t have enough people.
I’d happily let the UK DVLA sell my data if they spent the money hiring more people to renew my fucking license. March 1^st I started it and that was 8 weeks early. I’m wondering if they’ll crack a whole 12 months this time.
They sell it as well, how else would private parking companies know where to send the threatening letters.
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how the hell did Florida DMV make more than California? Isn't population and avg. income less therefore a smaller dataset to sell worth less than California's?
I can only assume the California DMV workers stole the money. As is tradition.
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Every Jury Duty summons is triggered by these fuckers.
Copyright your name and put ALL of your assets into trusts. Then lien the hell out of 'em and enforce that copyright to the highest degree possible. If they don't like it lien into them. >:)
Or charge them royalties and licensing costs for the privilege of putting your name on a license?
Also, I wonder if celebrities have this same privacy problem with the DMV - especially those who have copyrighted their names?
I like the way you think! I'd be pissed off if someone created a financial instrument using my copyrighted material if I was ever issued a ticket.
Yet I have to pay $150 for a sticker that says 24
Lol my state actually voted for it being capped at like 30 and the government was like...nah no
What if you want one that say 12? Or 32, or 47?
Double the price for vintage registration stickers mate
So this "24" is some mark that it's a vintage car?
Nah man I was making a joke. Idk where you are from but in the US you have to pay to register your car every 2 years. So depending on when you renew, the dmv will give you a colored sticker for your license plate with the year it expires. Mine expires in 2024, hence the “24 sticker”
Every year in California and it’s not cheap
That’s stupid
Here you pay for it once you take ownership, never again.
What the actual f-ck!?!?!?!,
That’s because having a license and driving is a privilege not a right. Suck but true
Hi this is Frank with the extended warranty department!
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Dmv needs to sell us the data of Indian people who keep scam calling me.
Most DMVs in most states sell driving records to employers and third party companies that provide this info to employers. Private information, besides your address, is not generally sold.
Plot twist - I don’t own a car!
Do you have a state-issued ID card?
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for all of the bad that comes of this, the data does help to keep the credit bureau data a little more clean. Ultimately it just makes the entire credit system more reliable.
You sound like a stinky punjabi
he is taking a break from harassing western women on facebook
Lol and Reddit gets into such a tizzy when companies do this.
But it’s the government doing it so it’s whatever.
Makes you wonder who’s really pushing the “selling data is bad” propaganda.
Oh no whatever will we do now that car insurance companies know where we live? 🙄
Madhavaz t1_j19xfsc wrote
Yup. And so does the United States Postal Service. As soon as you hand over the change of address form they sell that info to data collectors. EVERY large organization and company sells your data. Don't even get me started on those "Loyalty Rewards" cards from the grocery store and Target. They are a goldmine to data brokers. Remember when you got to college and you started getting all those credit card applications? Yeah, the schools sold you out. On and on...