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."
I'm not falling for that! (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
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I haven't got an SSN you insensitive clod!
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Click here to see what they have on you (Score:5, Informative)
TFA says:
"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"
Unfortunately that link got you to a page on www.citeworld.com which carries a link to www.nytimes.com
After a wild goose chase I finally got that link ---
https://aboutthedata.com/ [aboutthedata.com]
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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.
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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)
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Your bank probably has a legitimate reason to know it as well.... though I'm in Canada, and we have different rules from the US.
A partial Social Insurance Number was on my Equifax credit report last time I pulled it, and I've taken out large loans from the bank before. (> $30,000... I financed a new car through the bank... slightly higher interest than the "1.9%" that the car company was offering, but with the option to pay out early where the car company didn't meant that my loan was paid off faster and
Re:I'm not falling for that! (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget every insurance company those employers have ever provided benefits for, any bank you've ever had an account with, and if you've gone to college, they've got it, too -- and, if so, trust me, it's out there now.
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The DMV probably has it too. They used to use SSN for the license number, and though they quit that, I bet it's still in their files.
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Re:I'm not falling for that! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I'm not falling for that! (Score:4, Informative)
It apparently thinks it knows a couple things about me. It thinks it knows how much i make (almost correct.) It thinks i own a couple kinds of credit cards that i don't think i own. It thinks i've made exactly one purchase using those credit cards in the last two years. It thinks that purchase was an online purchase for $80. Notably it can't figure out my political party even though you can easily find my donation records to a prominent political party if you do a search using my real name.
But impressively it does seem to have realized i used a false birthday! It reports my birthday as actually being on an entirely different and equally wrong day.
So either this system is brain dead, or there's someone else out there with the same name as me, who's lived in the same place as i did a couple years ago, has the same last 4 SSN digits, but was born several weeks after i was and makes 99% of their purchases with cash.
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No they're playing a different trick.
Basically they are saying: the information we have on you is nothing but crap, so please keep using our cookies, and stop questioning our privacy-intruding advertisement business-model.
In reality, they probably know much more about you than they reveal here.
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Basically they are saying: the information we have on you is nothing but crap, so please keep using our cookies, and stop questioning our privacy-intruding advertisement business-model.
I ordered some stuff on Amazon once as a birthday present for my daughter. It was something that she was interested in at that time, but possibly not anymore. Anyway, she isn't going to buy this again, because I bought it for her as a Christmas present. And I'm not going to buy it for myself, because I'm not interested in it and never was. Amazon bombarded me with adverts to things related to this product for years. Absolutely annoying.
Now if my wife wants anything from Amazon, I buy it. It's all the sam
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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, Interesting)
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.
I was told by a retired jeweler in my neighborhood that being able to separate customers' "interests" has been a particularly acute problem in that sector for some time: Obviously, as with any business(especially one built on unnecessary luxury goods) they want to cultivate and flatter their good customers; but they ran into the persistent problem that some of their good customers had wives who did open marketing mail addressed to a household; but had not been the recipients of some or all of the jewelry purchased... That is, of course, awkward for all involved.
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Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When computers first attempt to perceive.
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Now if my wife wants anything from Amazon, I buy it. It's all the same bank account, so it doesn't matter whose card is used. ... Where this is really a violation of privacy is when I ... go to Amazon .. it shows me everything my wife has been looking at, and vice versa.
I'm not trying to defend Amazon, who are shites, but if you share a bank account with her then she is going to see expenditures you made with it, and if she is anything like my wife, want to know what they were for. That's what you get with a joint account. OTOH, if you were "just looking" and don't want her to know, you'd best look for it elsewhere, or open a different account with Amazon with a different bank card. Personally I have about 15 different credit cards and 5 bank accounts,
Re:I'm not falling for that! (Score:4, Informative)
It's not as if it's a trick -- they're very explicit that the purpose of the site is for you to tell them all about yourself so they can sell that info. https://aboutthedata.com/portal [aboutthedata.com] begins "Who are you? If you want to get the best advertising delivered to you, based on your actual interests, start here. Tell us who you are so we can show you the information used to fuel many of the marketing offers you receive from advertisers using Acxiom's digital marketing data."
As for who enjoys ads so much that they want to take time out of their day to do unpaid work for advertising companies... well I can't imagine.
Re:I'm not falling for that! (Score:4)
It's not as if it's a trick -- they're very explicit that the purpose of the site is for you to tell them all about yourself so they can sell that info. https://aboutthedata.com/portal [aboutthedata.com] begins "Who are you? If you want to get the best advertising delivered to you, based on your actual interests, start here. Tell us who you are so we can show you the information used to fuel many of the marketing offers you receive from advertisers using Acxiom's digital marketing data."
As for who enjoys ads so much that they want to take time out of their day to do unpaid work for advertising companies... well I can't imagine.
The question that occurs to me is "Are those assholes at Acxiom good enough to discern 'corrections' that make the data even less accurate than it was, or 'corrections' made to other peoples' profiles?"
It'll be a cold day in hell before I volunteer better data to scum like them; but I think that polluting the database would be my good deed for the day, probably my good deed for the month if I could automate it.
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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...
So why not give them bad data? For instance give them four random digits for the SSN. If they prevent you from 'logging in' then it means they have that data already so giving it to them won't change anything. And if they let you through it means they did not have that data and still don't and you still get to see your data, except possibly those fields they would have collated from the SSN.
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.
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, Funny)
Alright, here's what we know about you:
Name, physical address, email address, and last four digits of your ssn.
Gotcha!
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And you are +1 gullible
Incorrect. The word "gullible" is deprecated. It was removed from all dictionaries years ago. Look it up.
What you're thinking of is not "+1 gullible", but "doubleplus ungood thinking".
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
And you are +1 gullible
Incorrect. The word "gullible" is deprecated. It was removed from all dictionaries years ago. Look it up.
What you're thinking of is not "+1 gullible", but "doubleplus ungood thinking".
Never gets old. My sister pulled the old "you know the word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary" trick on a roommate long ago. Unlike you, roommate couldn't spell the word, attempted to look it up, failed, and declared "Oh my God, you're right!"
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.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
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!
Why don't you want collection agencies being able to correlate your social with contact information so they can harass you? Especially collection agencies who buy old debt packages from people who don't keep very good billing records, like most doctors and dentists, and try to collect bills you've already paid because some idiot left a copy of one in the wrong old cardboard box somewhere?
It's pretty clear that you don't understand the important fact that, when they screw up, you're obligated to pay them again, and you are just a deadbeat.
Or maybe they intend to monetize stupidity, which has been a pretty standard trick for as long as there has been commerce...
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
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?
That's about what the credit reporting agencies want from you in order to get your "free" yearly copy of your credit report. I always thought it was particularly convenient for them too.
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You mistake my use of sarcasm quotes. Yes, the law mandates the report, but their lobbyists got to help write the law to make it ok to collect that information which has a dual use of updating your credit report. Since it is dual use, it ain't really free.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
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?
If you think that the data brokers like Lexis Nexis, Choicepoint and these guys don't already have all of that information and more, you're sadly misinformed. Would it shock to know that all of that information is readily available to just about any business owner or attorney for $50 or less and nothing more than a promise (by them to the data broker) that you said that you wanted to do business with them or are a client of theirs?
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all of that information is readily available to just about any business owner or attorney for $50 or less
Is that per person? If it's even $10 per person, GP's point still stands. If they want to collect this data on thousands of people through a broker, that's a serious investment.
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.
What they know? Apparently nothing! (Score:2)
I have to give them my name, home address ...
And since they have to ask for all that data, that tells you they know nothing about you and your online presence.
Re:What they know? Apparently nothing! (Score:5, Funny)
Nah. They have to ask verification questions. It's just like when Google called me the other day telling me my GMail account has been hacked into. In order for them to verify who I was, I had to give them my name, my address, two phone numbers, another email address, my mother's maiden name, the credit card number that was registered on my Play account and a list of all the addresses I had lived at in the last five years. I gave them that information so they would know it was really me and then they helped get my account sorted out.
Good job (Score:5, Informative)
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Yea, nothing like clicking through ad-infested site after ad-infested site because the editors are too lazy to actually edit.
WTF is the point of people like samzenpus and timothy? We have voting for getting stories promoted to the front page already ...
I forgot, someone other than timothy has to be the one to post his stupid videos and dear diary entries to the front page.
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Sorry to break it to you, but many editors at Slashdot have been replaced with scripts over the years, short scripts. Timothy, on the other hand, is a real human, he works for Microsoft.
Pegged as a Windows user!? (Score:2)
If so, then your Linux systems are working fine! Just think of all the stupid ads they would serve up if they thought you were actually intelligent!
Re:Pegged as a Windows user!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pegged as a Windows user!? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pegged as a Windows user!? (Score:4, Funny)
What's your problem with Pervert?
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Thou art a tool.
Let me assist thee.
Thy grammar is atrocious.
The mistake was thine.
*waits for -1, Informative score*
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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...
Doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not _really_ trying to figure out data about who you are because they don't really care. What they care about are what ads are most likely to affect you. That's a clustering problem not an identification problem. And if those clusters happen to have similarities to a well-defined, named demographic category that just helps humans talk about them.
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They're not _really_ trying to figure out data about who you are because they don't really care. What they care about are what ads are most likely to affect you. That's a clustering problem not an identification problem. And if those clusters happen to have similarities to a well-defined, named demographic category that just helps humans talk about them.
What is the data broker's market? Advertisers (those who purchase ads), not necessarily the advertiser's customers. Their job isn't to sell the advertiser's product. Their job is to sell ad space to advertisers. So the data brokers marketing success doesn't have to come from actually knowing who their advertiser's potential customers are, they only need to convince their advertiser's that they do. If they happen to get it right sometimes then that's just gravy.
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No, what they really seem to want is to collect your name, email, home address, DOB and last four digits of your SSN.
Do you honestly believe that they don't already have a database with that information on every American that has ever applied for credit, filed a tax return, paid property taxes or had anything delivered to their home ever? If you think that that information is private, you've got another thing coming. It's all for sale from the likes of Lexis Nexis, Choicepoint or any number of others in the data business.
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They have that, but what they want is to index that to a browser fingerprint/supercookie using the likes of https://panopticlick.eff.org/ [eff.org] that is a master key type solution.... Even the ones that fall through those, cracks can probably be mostly pinned down by their neighbours based on IP addresses, other computers on the network, and other identifying information that leaks through the cracks.
Then if they can convince you to improve the results of their assessment of you, even better. The real gem of thi
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I don't think those pesky European privacy laws are working very well in the UK at least
http://www.bedfordshire-news.co.uk/News/Council-pockets-over-1000-selling-voters-personal-details-20130903174019.htm [bedfordshire-news.co.uk]
"Councils up and down the country have made thousands of pounds after registers of votersâ(TM) names and addresses were sold to the marketing firms, driving schools and estate agents."
The electoral register is available for anybody to view in person. But by selling an edited database of the information, councils are helping companies to send out thousands of unsolicited letters with a few clicks of a computer mouse.
Bedford Borough Council has defended its actions, stating: "The fee is set nationally, by law, and we are legally obliged by the government to sell the data on the edited register unless individuals chose to opt-out.â
It's not expensive either bringing in just £1300 in 5 years from all the sales combined.
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Every year when you fill the in electoral roll return there is a tick box for every person listed to choose to opt out of the version of the register that is sold. Despite what it says in the linked article it is very clear and the purpose is explained. While it does seem a bit crap that they might want to sell this in the first place it is very easy to opt out if you actually read the form. Any time you put your name to something and don't bother to read it and only get spam in return you should consider y
Give me the link! (Score:5, Informative)
I had to click through to a third page before getting a link to the relevant website.
The Acxiom site is found at https://aboutthedata.com/ [aboutthedata.com].
Privacy policy (FWIW) is here: https://aboutthedata.com/privacy/ [aboutthedata.com]
And this is why (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, because after years of reading people's Gmail accounts, they apparently didn't have all the info they needed...
Surprising, isn't it? And yet, when in all your years of emailing have you ever written, "I am a boy?" And if you had, would it be accurate?
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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)
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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.
Nothing unusual (Score:2)
Whats unusual about them asking you for your personal identifiable information for them to update their records, which then in turn they sell to advertiser, debit collectors and credit card companies?
Are you really so stupid as to think this isn't benefiting them in multiple ways? I don't give this information to any random person off the street, why the hell would I give it to the exact people I don't want to have it?
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why the hell would I give it to the exact people I don't want to have it?
They already have the minimum biographical info that they're asking for, that's public information unless you're in the witness protection program. What they don't have is the other related data which they're asking you to update for them. Now of course you wouldn't want to correct their inaccurate records of your other data, but it's nice to see that all of the disinformation and database poisoning is having its intended effects.
Pitty the site appears to be US-only (Score:5, Interesting)
Might be interesting to see what this data mob has on me and how accurate it is...
From what they know about me... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm a male or female or a cat who makes between $21,000 and $250,000 dollars
I'm between 16 and 79.
I apparently like boobs.
I'm either unemployed, self employed or work for others as a manager or employee.
I may have good credit.
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Re:From what they know about me... (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, I'm a cat that likes boobs, too...
Wanna hook up?
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.
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If they only asked for a name, anyone including your psycho ex-girlfriend could get this information.
Your psycho ex-girlfriend probably already has your social security number. She had plenty of opportunity to get it, after all.
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(posting to undo accidental troll moderation)
Marketers Nowadays think they know everything (Score:3, Interesting)
US only (Score:2)
US only makes it very dull.
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Great, another useless "field of study" (Score:5, Interesting)
Or is one wrong data point in what is essentially demographic data irrelevant? Sort of like one athlete with an "obese" BMI doesn't invalidate the concept of BMI on the whole?
Only a glimpse (Score:5, Informative)
Although the site shows visitors a few facts that some might consider sensitive, like race and ethnicity, it initially omits, at least in the version I saw, intimate references — like “gambling,” “senior needs,” “smoker in the household” and “adult with wealthy parent” — that Acxiom markets to corporate clients but that might discomfit consumers if they knew they were for sale.
So Axciom's transparency portal isn't so transparent at all...
AboutTheData.com doesn't work in Linux (Score:2)
But perhaps what I found most amusing was that it indicated my OS of choice was Windows. I haven't owned a Windows computer in a long time.
Well, he couldn't be a Linux user, since the site doesn't work in Linux (at least not with Fedora 19 and Firefox 23). You see a dot animation in the center of the screen, but the full page never loads. It works fine running the same browser in Windows XP.
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I've virtually never had to do that. I did find that it's possible to access the site in Linux via https://aboutthedata.com/portal/home/ [aboutthedata.com] rather than the top page.
First, we don't RTFA (Score:3)
At least the first 6 posts here said "OMG, they wanted all this information to show me my data!"...
Well, geniuses, considering that both Miller's article and the original NY Times article said "....Having filled out an identity verification form that asked for his name, birth date, address and the last four digits of his Social Security number..." personally, I wasn't terribly surprised that they asked for my name, birth date, address and the last four digits of my Social Security number.
Secondly, while I certainly agree that whatever you put into that form ends up going into their database as well, I'd like to pose a stupid question: how ELSE are they going to identify the person requesting the data? I mean, if all I had to put in was my name, then ANYONE could get the data they're about to show me, right? Personally, I strongly suspect that this is more to protect their assets from competitive gathering (after all, data is their business), but one could charitably interpret that this is a REASONABLE step to keep the information they have away from casually-prying eyes that are not the person indicated.
FWIW, it said my information was invalid, and I'd have to be manually identified (and this is all with absolutely correct entries). The second time I tried, it said there's already a user with that email. So, clearly a beta.
And a note to Ron: with a 5-minute scan of your "about Ron Miller" and a listing of articles, I can tell your probable politics - you're an Apple consumer, after all. FYI the fact that you *assert* you don't affiliate with a party also tells me volumes; it doesn't ipso facto mean that you don't in FACT align with a given party, either. And re your question, I guess I'd take the opposite view: while I know by correcting the information, I'm enhancing the value of their product, I'm going to get ads all the time anyway so I'd rather they be relevant.
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OK Sparky, I'll tell you. Start by allowing the user to enter any given piece. Search. If multiple results, inform user they must provide further info. Repeat.
In this manner, the user is in control of how much they feel comfortable giving just to see what info this particular entity
Opt Out of Interest-Based Advertising (Score:3)
http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/#completed [networkadvertising.org] give you the ablity to opt out of data collection but there's a catch,
you have to keep your cookies.
This site has changed since I last visited (years?), it used to have a large list of companies you could select to opt out from.
Now it just reads your cookies, 33 companies are listed that "honor" your opt-outs.
I use a rather large HOSTS file and delete my cookies when my browser closes, so this site does me little good.
my results: "These 0 member companies have enabled Online Behavioral Ads for this web browser."
Posted in case someone else can make use of it.
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For opt-out cookies as a Firefox add-on, allowing cookies that never go away, check here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/beef-taco-targeted-advertising/ [mozilla.org]
Not Much On Me, Not Totally Wrong (Score:2)
I looked for and couldn't find anything about my religion (since the author says they had his wrong.)
If you think you're giving something away by giving them the initial information, you're sadly naive.
I do hope the site is truthful because the data they have on me was way wrong. Since it says we're hopelessly in hock up to our eyeballs and upside down on our mortgage (we're neither), I left it alone hoping that misinformation might get a few marketers to look elsewhere for someone with some spare money to
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Today's Dilbert [dilbert.com] is somewhat relevant.
good! (Score:2)
Windows is for kids (Score:3)
Did anybody who RTFA read this WITHOUT the elipsis?
I haven't owned a Windows computer in a long time ... we are not interested in children's items.
Garbage in, garbage out (Score:5, Interesting)
Once a data stream becomes polluted, it is almost impossible to clean up. False information continually circulates between sources and companies often reinfecting data that were scrubbed. All the users of "big data" and "analytics" do not seem to grasp that concept, blindly trusting what they find, a group of entities which includes security agencies.
This is why database engines which produce "eventual consistency", such as MongoDB, enrage me. They are almost guaranteeing a polluted data stream. Or maybe I just do not get it.
Warning: Honeypot Posting by "samzenpus" (Score:3)
Furthermore, the point is most definitely how inaccurate their information may be, as they use it for employment screening, etc., and this particular company has long had congtracts with DHS, and the intel community.
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For extra confusion, try and find people in the same general geographic region with the same or similar name to yours and use bits and pieces of that information when filling out non-essential forms and such. The goal is to trick their databases into confusing you with somebody else when all they have is the name and not the SSN so that your profile becomes a confused jumble of inaccurate, false, misleading and cross pollinated information from many other real and fake people with the same or similar names.
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and the errors are probably deliberate - maybe you'll get annoyed enough by them to correct the information.