What Marketers Think They Know About You and What They Really Do 277
mattydread23 writes "Data broker Acxiom did something a little unusual this week. It launched a service that lets you see the data they've collected on you. CITEworld writer Ron Miller checked it out, and found it to be mostly laughably inaccurate. Among the things they got wrong included his religion, his interests, and the number of kids he has. But worst? It pegged him as a Windows user."
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
And in order to see the data they have about me, I have to give them my name, home address, last four digits of my SSN? Seriously? They're going to make a fortune off of this!
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, that surprised me as well. You serve ads to my browser, yet you can't identify me without me identifying myself? Fail.
And this is why (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
What marketers know about me:
He's running AdBlock.
What marketers think they know:
Everyone wants to see relevant ads.
He's running AdBlock because he's annoyed that the ads he's been seeing aren't relevant enough.
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Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pegged as a Windows user!? (Score:5, Insightful)
What you say is funny.
At least for the programmer positions, if you have someone who uses Windows and Visual Studio you are all over the chart, but someone who uses GNU/Linux and vi or emacs you are without fail in the mid to high skill range. What it has to do with intelligence is beyond me. But you can infer interest in IT beyond the 9-5 assignments and few "dumb" people would do that...
Do you really want them to just ask for a name? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they only asked for a name, anyone including your psycho ex-girlfriend could get this information.
Re:I'm not falling for that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly.
I looked at what they were asking for and realized I would be giving them things
they don't know already. Why would I do that.
ItsATrap.
Re:I'm not falling for that! (Score:3, Insightful)
It will only be a matter of time until they find clustering algorithms that can separate your "interests".
Basically it is like you have three clouds of points. One cloud is your interests. One cloud is for your wife, and one cloud is for your child. For a human, it is easy to tell these clouds apart. For a computer, it will soon be easy too.
Re:I'm not falling for that! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a PO Box as my billing address and I don't provide any portion of my SSN to anyone. It would be impossible for them to have any information on me.
You just keep right on telling yourself that.
Re:I'm not falling for that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
He's running AdBlock because he's annoyed that the ads he's been seeing aren't relevant enough.
That seems to be the point they're missing (deliberately I'm sure). I don't want to see ads, but I especially don't want to see relevant ads. I remember during the various stages of banning advertising of smoking in the UK they used to talk about not promoting smoking just brand awareness to get existing smokers to switch to them. This was of course rubbish, and the same is true for most advertising. They aren't trying to get you to buy a product you are already planning to, just from them instead of someone else, they are trying to get you to buy something you don't want or didn't realise you wanted (but were perfectly happy without). If I actually wanted something I would search for it myself, I'm not going to wait till an ad on my favourite website suggests it. So more relevant ads means finding a weakness in you they can exploit to sell you some crap you don't really want.
Re:I'm not falling for that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm not falling for that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Thought I'd look at my own data, but when they started asking for the last 4 digits of my SSN I decided I didn't care so much about what they knew about me...
Phishing, anyone? I get the feeling that they don't actually have (or perhaps aren't sure of) my personal information like address, full name, DOB, or last 4 digits of SSN linked to my email address, and are using this as a gimmick to get goobers to add value to their proprietary data for free.
If they wanted to actually provide information to curious people securely, they could have provided a form that asked for a public email address only, and then emailed a report directly to that address. Surely they can look up your info based on an email address. Scumbags.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
While data-brokers have my name, address, etc., what they DO NOT have is a 1-to-1 correlation between that data and my PC.
By using that tool, you are telling them that user Jon Doe can be definitively associated with IP: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, Network MAC: DE-AD-BE-EF, cookie RANDOM.TXT, email address:user@gullible.com and a specific browser footprint. Essentially, they can tie together all the data HUMANS use to identify one another with all the ways COMPUTERS on the internet identify each other. Without this, data-brokers can make some assumptions but providing the information on aboutthedata.com solidly confirms that connection
Just because they have some of the pieces is no reason to give them the rest.
Re:Click here to see what they have on you (Score:2, Insightful)
I once entered my YouTube username into one of those sites that track YouTube stats. Since it had no data, it stated it would start tracking from now on.
Oh, great.