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Businesses Privacy

Little-known Companies Are Amassing Your Data and Selling the Analysis To Clients (nytimes.com) 45

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
As consumers, we all have "secret scores": hidden ratings that determine how long each of us waits on hold when calling a business, whether we can return items at a store, and what type of service we receive. A low score sends you to the back of the queue; high scores get you elite treatment. From a report: Every so often, journalists lament these systems' inaccessibility. They're "largely invisible to the public," The New York Times wrote in 2012. "Most people have no inkling they even exist," The Wall Street Journal said in 2018. Most recently, in April, The Journal's Christopher Mims looked at a company called Sift, whose proprietary scoring system tracks 16,000 factors for companies like Airbnb and OkCupid. "Sift judges whether or not you can be trusted," he wrote, "yet there's no file with your name that it can produce upon request." As of this summer, though, Sift does have a file on you, which it can produce upon request. I got mine, and I found it shocking: More than 400 pages long, it contained all the messages I'd ever sent to hosts on Airbnb; years of Yelp delivery orders; a log of every time I'd opened the Coinbase app on my iPhone. Many entries included detailed information about the device I used to do these things, including my IP address at the time.

Sift knew, for example, that I'd used my iPhone to order chicken tikka masala, vegetable samosas and garlic naan on a Saturday night in April three years ago. It knew I used my Apple laptop to sign into Coinbase in January 2017 to change my password. Sift knew about a nightmare Thanksgiving I had in California's wine country, as captured in my messages to the Airbnb host of a rental called "Cloud 9." This may sound somewhat comical, but the companies gathering and paying for this data find it extremely valuable for rooting out fraud and increasing the revenue they can collect from big spenders. Sift has this data because the company has been hired by Airbnb, Yelp, and Coinbase to identify stolen credit cards and help spot identity thieves and abusive behavior. Still, the fact that obscure companies are accumulating information about years of our online and offline behavior is unsettling, and at a minimum it creates the potential for abuse or discrimination -- particularly when those companies decide we don't stack up.
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Little-known Companies Are Amassing Your Data and Selling the Analysis To Clients More

Little-known Companies Are Amassing Your Data and Selling the Analysis To Clients

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  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • With a name as generic as "Sift", I can't even guess what their URL is supposed to be, nor find them via Google. All I get is websites about "scale-invariant feature transform".

      • Um, sift.com.

        • I guess I should have tried that first, but with the endless new top level domains we have today, it could have been anything.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            I guess I should have tried that first, but with the endless new top level domains we have today, it could have been anything.

            There may be a ton of TLDs, but for the most part, unless it uses a "normal" TLD or a country code (.com/.net/.org or country TLD) I see them as a shady company. The only other one might be domain specific TLDs like .aero which I would only respect for aerospace companies or people.

            But if you give me a .biz, or whatever else, I'm not going to get a good impression of you. It screams

      • It's a trick; their web site is actually at surf.com.

    • Read the article, it says how to... (Score:5, Informative)

      by zenman64 ( 6362296 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @04:10PM (#59384580)
      Sift, which determines consumer trustworthiness, asks you to email privacy@sift.com. (An earlier version of this article contained a link to an online form; the company disabled the page after receiving thousands of submissions.) Zeta Global, which identifies people with a lot of money to spend, lets you request your data via an online form. Retail Equation, which helps companies such as Best Buy and Sephora decide whether to accept or reject a product return, will send you a report if you email returnactivityreport@theretailequation.com. Riskified, which develops fraud scores, will tell you what data it has gathered on your possible crookedness if you contact privacy@riskified.com. Kustomer, a database company that provides what it calls “unprecedented insight into a customer’s past experiences and current sentiment,” tells people to email privacy@kustomer.com.

    • Thanks for telling us how to request our file. I looked at their website and there's not a link I can find that takes such requests.

      From TFA:

      "How to get your data

      There are many companies in the business of scoring consumers. The challenge is to identify them. Once you do, the instructions on getting your data will probably be buried in their privacy policies. Ctrl-F “request” is a good way to find it. Most of these companies will also require you to send a photo of your driver’s license to verify your identity. Here are five that say they’ll share the data they have on you.

      Sift, which determines consumer trustwor

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Calydor ( 739835 )

        So in order to get the list of what data they have on you ... you have to give them MORE data, including verified birth date and photo. Hoo boy.

  • At this point all of this is just a broken record. How many more breathless articles do we need to know that everything we do involving any sort of electronic transaction is tracked and potentially logged and analyzed by someone?

    I will save the next poster of such articles some time - anything you do involving a computer is probably logged, tracked, and analyzed by one or more third parties including but not limited to the party or parties directly tied to the transaction.

    This is 100% true, you should assum

    • Re:Broken record. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @04:10PM (#59384574)

      anything you do involving a computer is probably logged, tracked, and analyzed by one or more third parties including but not limited to the party or parties directly tied to the transaction. I'm not saying you should accept as good these things, just that they are true and inevitable.

      I think the nature and quantity of these third parties is way different in the EU under the GDPR than it is in the US. So I don't believe the "inevitability" of it. I think there's an opportunity for public disquiet to translate into political will. And one of the the engines of that disquiet is a steady stream of more of these stories.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Any that do operate in the EU will get targeted with the GDPR Data Subject Access Request canon.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          EU nation regulations will not protect people for selecting to bring an ad company mic into their home and have it "on" 24/7...
          Thats a freedom they have after seeing ads for what the "mic" service can do for them around the home.
          Just like many in people the EU nations selected to by Microsoft and Apple OS over emerging EU nation "computer" brands back in the 1980's.
          EU nations censorship laws and new EU tech tax ideas won't protect privacy when people in the EU bring an ad company into their own home for

          • EU nation regulations will not protect people for selecting to bring an ad company mic into their home and have it "on" 24/7...

            They do make it illegal to store any data not relevant to serve the customer, and categorically illegal in all case, even when the company is bought up by another to transfer that data to other companies for free or for money.

            That is very good and stops this bullshit the rest of you suffer from.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AHuxley ( 892839 )
              The data sets are out of the EU in real time ie ad time .. to get the results the person needed as the service they wanted.. and so the ad company gets its product ie user data.
              Re 'That is very good " Nations in the EU regulated/shaped/supported computer use back in the 1980's too. That resulted in people in the EU selecting to use more advanced Apple and Microsoft brands ...
              Just as they are now buying 24/7 mic services from some brands over EU service brands...
              Regulations can't make people buy EU bra

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      What a lie, they are most definately not inevitable, all it takes is the stroke of the pen and if those fuckheads keep doing it, they will enjoy and extended stay at the grey bar hotel, the can comment of the qualities of that establishment to AirBnB ;D. Not it the least bit inevitable and work is underway to make them illegal, just a matter of time and those anal retentive cunts will be spending time with custodial sentences. Cash up fast fuckers, your business practice is to be made illegal.

  • Odds are that some (maybe all) underrepresented groups are rated worse than average and that results in meaningful disadvantages (like the inability to return products) . Since there are a variety of studies showing that automated machine learning type systems can exhibit bias (due to bias in the training sets) it seems that there is a basis for a lawsuit.

    This may be a way to crush this type of operation.

    Aside from that, I wonder what they would charge for all the information that they have accumulated on s

  • This has been going on for decades. Digital tracking data from smartphones/apps is just one of the inputs.

    • No kidding! There are jobless morons who figured out how to save a link to slashdot posting and they are so immensely proud of it too. They will post links claiming I faked my Tesla ownership and I misstated the purchase price of the Tesla I don't own, ("55K or 50K you are a liar!!!").

      When Natural Stupidity can keep track of postings in slashdot like this, imagine what Artificial Intelligence can do!!!

      • What? Care to elaborate on this?

        • This guy 110010001000 has links to a couple postings by me, where I mentioned the cost of my Tesla model 3 to be 50K in one and 55K in another. And some random posting from some Tesla motors club website member asking me to join that site. From that this dimwit deduces that I am faking by Tesla ownership. He would normally reply to my postings with a canned posting.

          sample posting. [slashdot.org] Now a days he does it as AC. Earlier he used to post the same canned posting under his own name. Used to wonder what kind o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chromal ( 56550 )
      I doubt it's been going on for decades. It's taken the advent of the Internet, automated systems with personally identifying information, and an utter breakdown of government regulators and consumer privacy protections for this intolerable violation of a citizen's reasonable expectation of privacy to get this far out-of-hand. These corporations deserve to have injuctions that force them to cease operating and make reparations, their executives and investors deserve to be tarred, feathered, and either chased
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Almost everything i post on social media has only a small percentage of truth. I do not own a boat. I did not buy a second boat to race against the first one.

    • Thats an interesting idea.

      I mainly only use my facebook to keep an eye on the union I am in (which holds discussions on facebook... seriously... unions fucking suck, especially this one) so littering my "wall" with misinformation isnt such a bad idea.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Surround the approved ads with user content that gets ads removed from a site.
      Let the SJW social media approved ads collect and track all the wrong words in comments.
      After too many mentions of the wrong words in creative comments the ads have to consider the sites they support :)
      Use the CoC ads follow to pack their ad tracking networks with the wrong kinds of politics.
      The more the ads track users comments, the more ads per site they have to remove...
      Content creation and the freedom to publish works b
  • is only being manned and trained for by the RICHEST 0.01%
  • For those who missed it, we know how this ends [wikipedia.org].
  • Yes, Big Brother is watching you. He's just hiding. I don't think we will ever be able to untie this Gordian knot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Falos ( 2905315 )

      "Watching" suggests a human monitor. It's hard enough explaining to surface dwellers that "surveillance" means massive logging, not an FBI agent listening to your phone.

      Which is worse in many ways, considering that execute-if-X algorithms don't make allowances humans can.

  • by not having a networked ad company mic in your home that is "collecting" 24/7...
    The ad company does not need to know the number of people, their voice prints, accents, number of pets, TV shows that are on...
    Fill your internet history with all kinds of interesting search terms just for fun.
    The more the ad brands collect the more creative the fiction they have to sell as fact....

    • What you need in your home is a telescreen that just repeats the phrase "OK, boomer" whenever you try to post your incoherent fucking drivel.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Result: You wait on hold longer.
    Companies decide you do stack up: You get the inflated price list.
    You choose.

    Personally, I'd rather that they don't know who I am. I get the good service and introductory prices because they want a new customer. Once they get me pigeon-holed, I create a new fake identity and start over.

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