The Good and Bad of Data Collection 146
Nephilium writes "Reason magazine has dedicated their latest issue to a discussion of privacy and data collection. They sent subscribers a customized cover of the magazine [as previously covered on Slashdot]. Some good points as to the benefits and drawbacks of who is sharing your information." The sample targeted advertisements are for non-profit organizations, but it may not be long until someone figures out how much companies will pay to utilize this sort of targeting.
Re:Cool! (Score:5, Informative)
ashcroft's eyeball (Score:5, Informative)
(from this cryptome eyeball [cryptome.org] - it is a lot of data since it covers 4 places, please don't slashdot)
Re:where can I get one? (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't looked for a home address there in a few years though so I'm not sure how up-to-date they are with the photos on file.
Re:Anonymous Credit Cards (Score:3, Informative)
The catch? The transaction fees on these things are horrendous. Anybody who has the credit history to qualify and the personal resolve to not charge things they can't pay off is better off getting a real credit card... those are free to have, free to use, and also contribute good notes to your credit history for your future credit requests.
If you want to avoid giving your name for tin foil hat purposes, at least you have the option to get a nameless credit card. However, you're going to pay extra for that privledge.
It's not just the insurers who know ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:where can I get one? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How'bout NO ADS (Score:5, Informative)
I also must admit I've never once disliked the ads in those magazines, I could even truthfully say I buy them as much for the ads as anything else. But the truth is, no one gets rich in marketing letting people know about products they would already want. So this stuff about "if they only had more data, they'd target us" is bullshit. They'll still be trying to sell you a subscription to GQ, the latest fashion deoderant, and GM sports car.
Re:Cool! (Score:2, Informative)
In terms of geocoding, we didn't try to go in and find a home address. That's why people with subscriptions pointing to PO boxes got a photo of the post office or city center. Even when there was an home address, sometimes the geocoding (pulling lat/long info based on street address) was a bit off due to variations in the way that addresses are determined/recorded.
In any case, if people have technical questions, feel free to post them and I'll do my best to answer (I led the implementation of this project).
Satellite images (Score:2, Informative)
Gobs and gobs of satellite data are available here - i worked at a small company that made heavy use of this. Takes some effort to figure out all the gobbledygoop, but the effort is all it costs to get data.