If you are unaware, Americans can get copies of their records from Lexis-Nexis, who runs a very similar business. You get one free copy annually under the FACT act.
I just went through it again. It is a centimeter of paper.
They had every address (and a few extra!) I've lived at in my life. They had the address I'd stayed at with relatives for 6 weeks between moves. The email address I used to purchase (I use a unique email address per place I give an email to, eg store_name@mydomain.com) stuff from: jcrew, ebags, performance bike. They had multiple sources for address information, including the CRAs, USPS, E-merges (voter registration), Neustar, Alloy Media, and a dozen companies I've never heard of. They had college records from Alloy Media. They had emails for my partner. They had deed information for most places I've lived. They had CLUE information -- all car insurance claims -- for me and for people I've shared car insurance with.
They had spaces for FAA licensing, hunting/fishing licenses, lawsuits, payday loans, watercraft, ATF (gun) licenses and investigations, marriage licenses, and sex offender status.
this is why, among the many many rules I've adopted in life, as an adult with an increasing amount of RL experience: (1) never fill out forms when it's not truly necessary, and (2) always pay in cash (whether USD or Euro or Bitcoin). Oh and use "ad blocking" and decline/disable cookies/js/etc as much as possible.
related: we also live in a world increasingly of "wallet-based pricing/acceptance". which means, if someone (a vendor, a thief) might charge you a higher price (or be more likely to attack/steal from you) if they have reason to believe you are upper income, then, you want to minimize how much information they have about you, esp about your identity. For example, if you're a software engineer by profession, you never ever want a vendor to know your profession (or your name, if a google of that can lead to your profession, eg.) before you hear from them the price, or the "availability" of the product. I'd love to think we live in a world where that shouldn't matter. But an increasing amount of the evidence I've seen, with my own eyes/ears (not theory, not second-hand), is consistent with having to take that into account.
generally, the less the other party in a transaction (vendor, fellow citizen, etc.) knows about you, as an individual, the more likely you are to receive an objectively fair/neutral price/response. They think you're poor? Decline. They think are minority? Decline. They think you have higher income/wealth? Higher price. They think you have lower income/wealth? Suddenly not available for <reasons>.
My solution is to buy as much stuff as possible from amazon. They know just about everything I buy, but they have mostly the same incentives as me, ie my information doesn't leak out of amazon. They may let people market through them, but they're sure gonna make sure nothing leaks out...
Isn't that effectively "putting all your eggs in one basket"? If Amazon changes business models at some point in the future, or is breached somehow, they'd have a goldmine of information about you. If you split up your shopping at least each individual shop has less incentive to reveal your information to competitions shops.
Ha. So the "Full File Disclosure" form has entries for full name, dob, social security, driver's license info current address, past addresses, phone number. If they somehow didn't have that info before, they would definitely have it after you send the form it. Also kind if a neat trick, much like the coupon trick from the article.
It would be funny if you sent in the form and then if you weren't in the system, they'd just photocopy the form and send it back to you with a "thank you" note.
Funny side story about them: I tried to interview there once, many years ago. They have this antiquated in-house developed query language -- a skill you couldn't transfer anywhere. So you'd sort of be stuck there, for life.
Up-front said would force me to works on weekends, for what already was looking like a miserable pay. As if living in Dayton, Ohio wouldn't have been enough punishment.
Best part was the future manager made a joke about how she likes to "crack her whip sometimes", which made the other engineer in the room laugh ... nervously. Was half expecting him pull me to the side and whisper "escape while you still can".
Technically they only ask for 1 of each column, so it's not as revealing as it seems. You could go apply for a new state ID, use that for Category A (revealing your address/birthday/weight/eye color/donor status/tiny image of your face), and then send them a gas bill (revealing address and last 4 digits of credit card). Assuming you've done any shopping online in the past 4 years your address is probably already on file, so the only new information they'd have is your birthday and personal stats.
That might actually be worth it if the original comment is correct and they have ~60 pages of information available on file per person.
Wow, bragging in an interview about riding employees hard is special. OTOH, you should be grateful! That may have saved you from an awful situation. (But yeah, I bet they're currently whining about an engineering shortage.)
Anyhow, I didn't provide my ssn, just drivers license plus my current address on a utility bill. I'm sure CA has already sold them the drivers license data anyway.
I did this. The report they sent claimed that the former resident of my apartment was still living here. I guess I could write back to correct it, but I also wonder if allowing the mistake to remain would provide me with plausible deniability if anyone ever tries to use my credit report against me.
If your credit is messed up, you will have other issues to contend with besides erroneous addresses.
Side note: if you did have an outstanding debt, a collection agency might serve the wrong person. This could trigger a law suit... Or some sort grief for some undeserving person. :(
Completely agree. When I scanned the article I thought, 'bull shit.'
There are a lot of players in this space, and everyone that I've evaluated so far is basically selling astrology (i.e. profiles that could match 60% of the attributes of any sample of the population).
Then you have Q Interactive which they also bought which was largely known for clickgen.com and coolsavings.com Like Fluent they are big in co-registration, lead generation, data collection & sales, affiliate marketing etc.
That's really a tiny bit of the data that gets traded on consumers every day. All kinds of transactions get logged and sold. Credit card declined transactions are an example that surprises many people however it's the kind of data that debt consolidation, pre-paid debit card and credit management companies love.
> Dubner says most Americans have little to fear. As examples, he cites idiCORE uses such as locating a missing person and nabbing a fraud or terrorism suspect.
Directing us to think about children invites us to have terrible nightmares about what could happen to them, and this could be called a kind of terrorism.
At this stage government must declare everyone a criminal, terrorist and child abuser and let people work hard and pay taxes to get their names off the list by the time they die.
Even better, by acting irrationaly it exposes itself to abuse by those who know how to manipulate those labels.
Some neighbor doesn't like how you cut the grass -- calls the tip line telling them he saw you build bombs in your basement. Your house is raided, yet no one will be punished because they can claim "But I was thinking of our country and safety".
These businesses have no legitimate way to be audited for validity beyond cross-comparison, and if data brokers go the same route as Wall Street hedges there's going to be a lot of spoofed data in there to move markets and public narratives.
But Bloomberg needs is to click and drag the article so they can link up or information together.
OTOH, I'm sure it will be covered by Buzzfeed. I'll even provide a nice click bait title for them to A/B test: "This company you've never heard of knows every personal detail about you."
Reinsurance companies (which backstop pretty much all insurance in the US) also do this, with significantly more private data available. I would imagine there are quite a few companies that try this.
Consumer insurers all utilize re-insurers. They essentially loan out the money to the insurance companies, they are the ones really taking on all the risk so they get all the underwriting data from the insurance companies.
The reinsurers give a shit about profiles about individual policyholders on the consumer level? I just can't see how that level of effort makes sense on that scale.
They are the most sophisticated in the industry. They also handle something like 7T in assets.
The insurance companies themselves are fairly empty pass-thru companies for a lot policy types. They all use the same forms, call centers, models, brokers. So the reinsurance companies make sure the models are good.
None of this clickbait nonsense compares to what Facebook and Google have on most of us and the average American. These people that run something like this and boast about knowing "When the last time you had Chinese food was" are literally the information industry's equivalent of click farms and scraper sites.
Are Facebook and Google selling granular personal information to third parties and individuals on specific people by request?
I fully acknowledge they utilize the information they mine about you to optimize their ad networks, but that's quite a bit different from releasing the information for a price.
Yes, they are. You can sign up for retargeting information from them, and cross reference that with those people when they visit your site. You pay it forward and pay a bit per segment, but you get the same results.
Retargeting doesn't release the information to you. They are selling access to their network under specific conditions. Retargeting just lets me say, "make sure X sees my ad", it doesn't let me say "I know of X person, send me all their information so I can do what I want with it."
There's a pretty big difference. Facebook and Google would not be in business if they let third parties aggregate their detailed personal records.
There is a huge difference between aggregate metrics and detailed individual personal information. It's such an astounding difference, that I'd love to hear what you think is so similar between "people between 30 and 40 like your product", and "Leon Kowalski from 1187 at Hunterwasser, who is 32 years old, divorced, pays alimony, has $30,000 in debt, has been arrested three times, once for felony assault, buys fetish sex toys online, and participates in white supremacy forums likes your product."
I wouldn't call most Bloomberg articles "clickbait". I am glad they are exposing the existence of these companies. And I think you're missing what distinguishes the two: with FB/google, you can opt out. These other players are aggregating public records. There is a difference.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 95.0 ms ] threadMine ran to over 60 pages.
https://personalreports.lexisnexis.com/access_your_full_file...
They had every address (and a few extra!) I've lived at in my life. They had the address I'd stayed at with relatives for 6 weeks between moves. The email address I used to purchase (I use a unique email address per place I give an email to, eg store_name@mydomain.com) stuff from: jcrew, ebags, performance bike. They had multiple sources for address information, including the CRAs, USPS, E-merges (voter registration), Neustar, Alloy Media, and a dozen companies I've never heard of. They had college records from Alloy Media. They had emails for my partner. They had deed information for most places I've lived. They had CLUE information -- all car insurance claims -- for me and for people I've shared car insurance with.
They had spaces for FAA licensing, hunting/fishing licenses, lawsuits, payday loans, watercraft, ATF (gun) licenses and investigations, marriage licenses, and sex offender status.
related: we also live in a world increasingly of "wallet-based pricing/acceptance". which means, if someone (a vendor, a thief) might charge you a higher price (or be more likely to attack/steal from you) if they have reason to believe you are upper income, then, you want to minimize how much information they have about you, esp about your identity. For example, if you're a software engineer by profession, you never ever want a vendor to know your profession (or your name, if a google of that can lead to your profession, eg.) before you hear from them the price, or the "availability" of the product. I'd love to think we live in a world where that shouldn't matter. But an increasing amount of the evidence I've seen, with my own eyes/ears (not theory, not second-hand), is consistent with having to take that into account.
generally, the less the other party in a transaction (vendor, fellow citizen, etc.) knows about you, as an individual, the more likely you are to receive an objectively fair/neutral price/response. They think you're poor? Decline. They think are minority? Decline. They think you have higher income/wealth? Higher price. They think you have lower income/wealth? Suddenly not available for <reasons>.
It would be funny if you sent in the form and then if you weren't in the system, they'd just photocopy the form and send it back to you with a "thank you" note.
Funny side story about them: I tried to interview there once, many years ago. They have this antiquated in-house developed query language -- a skill you couldn't transfer anywhere. So you'd sort of be stuck there, for life.
Up-front said would force me to works on weekends, for what already was looking like a miserable pay. As if living in Dayton, Ohio wouldn't have been enough punishment.
Best part was the future manager made a joke about how she likes to "crack her whip sometimes", which made the other engineer in the room laugh ... nervously. Was half expecting him pull me to the side and whisper "escape while you still can".
That might actually be worth it if the original comment is correct and they have ~60 pages of information available on file per person.
Anyhow, I didn't provide my ssn, just drivers license plus my current address on a utility bill. I'm sure CA has already sold them the drivers license data anyway.
Side note: if you did have an outstanding debt, a collection agency might serve the wrong person. This could trigger a law suit... Or some sort grief for some undeserving person. :(
Hmm.
There are a lot of players in this space, and everyone that I've evaluated so far is basically selling astrology (i.e. profiles that could match 60% of the attributes of any sample of the population).
Then you have Q Interactive which they also bought which was largely known for clickgen.com and coolsavings.com Like Fluent they are big in co-registration, lead generation, data collection & sales, affiliate marketing etc.
That's really a tiny bit of the data that gets traded on consumers every day. All kinds of transactions get logged and sold. Credit card declined transactions are an example that surprises many people however it's the kind of data that debt consolidation, pre-paid debit card and credit management companies love.
Right. Think of the children and the terrorists.
Some neighbor doesn't like how you cut the grass -- calls the tip line telling them he saw you build bombs in your basement. Your house is raided, yet no one will be punished because they can claim "But I was thinking of our country and safety".
I wish people tried harder to reduce click bait titles.
OTOH, I'm sure it will be covered by Buzzfeed. I'll even provide a nice click bait title for them to A/B test: "This company you've never heard of knows every personal detail about you."
I'd like a browser extension that uses NLP to identify and hide clickbait headlines.
The insurance companies themselves are fairly empty pass-thru companies for a lot policy types. They all use the same forms, call centers, models, brokers. So the reinsurance companies make sure the models are good.
I fully acknowledge they utilize the information they mine about you to optimize their ad networks, but that's quite a bit different from releasing the information for a price.
There's a pretty big difference. Facebook and Google would not be in business if they let third parties aggregate their detailed personal records.
That said, I agree there's nothing particularly newsworthy in there. These companies have existed for a long time.