Open Letter To Data Brokers Are A Bunch Of Idiots Or Current Business
from the data-brokers-or-broken-data? dept
Attention world: there is a problem growing and something must be done about it! Some weeks back, a story about OfficeMax sending out a letter to a customer that was addressed to "Daughter Killed in Car Crash or Current Business."
“The mailing list OfficeMax requested from the third-party provider was for Businesses, Small Offices and Home Offices,” says OfficeMax spokesperson Karen Denning by email. “NO personal information qualifiers were part of our request; we were not seeking personal information and did not ask for it. As an additional measure to prevent future mailing errors, we have upgraded the filters designed to flag inappropriate information.”Note what they're saying. They're saying that they hadn't requested personal information for this mailing list. They are not saying that the data broker does not have that information, nor are they saying that they have not, or never will, request such information. This only made readers of the story ask even more questions about who has what data on them and how that data is used in business.
Without more information about what exactly happened here, we’re left to assume that there are data brokers keeping track of parents with dead kids and that someone put an entry into the wrong spreadsheet cell, accidentally listing Seay’s tragedy in the column designated for the name of his business.On its own, the explanation that a telemarketer might note that there was a car death to denote sensitivity in sales might have sated most of the public. But, like I said: epidemic. Or at least the start of one, now that we have a similar story, one that might not be quite so easy to explain.
On Thursday, freelance writer Lisa McIntire's mother received a credit card offer from Bank of America sort of addressed to her daughter. There was one tiny difference, though, in the name; instead of Lisa McIntire, the letter was addressed to a "Lisa Is a Slut McIntire." McIntire's mother contacted her daughter via text and then sent a series of photos. McIntire, of course, was slightly disturbed and took to Twitter to share the unusual junk mail.
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Filed Under: data brokers, mailings, marketing
Companies: bank of america, office max
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Really?
Let's get serious for a moment. There are a ton of websites out there that collect information for credit card offers, and many of them will mail out directly without any real data filtering - you ask for it, you get it. Some malicious people (damn, they exist?) will use those sites to mailbomb or otherwise harass others with unwanted junk mail and the like.
The first case is interesting, but may be nothing more than an error made by an employee (say at an insurance company) who modified an address line with a commentary line of text. Then the insurance company sells a mailing list, which get aggregated and boom, the problem goes forward.
It's not really a big deal. Every time you leave checked (or check) the box that says "I would like to receive offers from related companies or partners" you pretty much just told them to sell your information.
You did it to yourself, for the most part.
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Re: Really?
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In any case, this girl's name is Lisa... what would one expect.
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I also hope that there isn't a real person named "Hugh Dontneedthis". I've used that one quite a bit when a name is required.
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Heck, if it lets you, just use example.com.
That way you don't wind up causing anyone else to be spammed.
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2. ???
3. Profit!
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Digital privacy will have to be addressed in some sort of updated laws requiring the datamining industry to put some dampers on this practice.
I continually do what I can to prevent any data at all from being mined but it is so persuasive and hidden that it is near impossible to get it all. Nor is there any sort of central hub where you can go to get off this crap. It is instead scattered all over the place with most requiring personal identification, residence address, just to get it removed and halted. Even then, it is often just a temporary fix and sometimes next to worthless as many want you to take some sort of cookie to use as the stop block. First time you clear your cookies you are back at step one. My browser will clear all cookies, LSOs, and evercookies each closing and it will remain that way.
Google, facebook, and most of the other major sites are far over the line with this crap.
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The real solution is to give people copyright over their personal info. That way we can use all of the copyright industry's tools to block the spreading of information. DCMA anyone?
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Irony
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Re: Irony
http://www.zip-codes.com/blog/2013/05/01/what-is-a-zip-4-code/
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In the case of Lisa you can quickly find a free online tool that gives you which street, which block, and which side of the street she lives on. There are only 4 houses that fit the description. If you pay a fee, then you can get the exact house she lives in.
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801-900 Street Name (Odd only)
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If I look up "94025-5635" on Google, one of the near-top results is "Robert McIntire on San Mateo Dr, Menlo Park, California > 411.info"
The web page linked to has an address... Robert and Lisa "who can't redact worth a damn" McIntire prolly share the same address!
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data mining
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Re: data mining
We're hoping you are too stupid and trust us with your money!
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It takes one to know one.
"People might finally begin to understand just how much personal information, or information about them, is out there and how companies are using it."
So they have info related to her being a slut?
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A bad data broker story
The deluge slowed to a trickle when I contacted the offices of a legislator in Pennsylvania, who e-mailed me campaign materials. It seems the zip code the data brokers had attached to the non-existent town was in his district. Through his good offices the data brokers were disabused of the notion that my e-mail belonged to a person named Maria Flack, and within a few months the frequency of e-mail for the (probably also non-existent) M.F. fell to about one message a quarter.
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Working in a healthcare setting, I've seen comments like this in patient and doctor notes get transmitted in datafeeds because someone was pissed off. I used to scan our EMR (think patient tracker type thing) for cuss words and find all sorts of comments like "she's a b*tch" or "called me a n*gger - hope he dies!" in the notes. Sometimes you can't control people.
But hey, they'll probably settle out of court if someone ever takes them to task because someone expected them to write an anti-cussing routine in their code and demand they spend millions to implement a word-filter (which everyone will bypass anyways) to get around it.
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auto complete
>>and
>>that someone put an entry into the wrong spreadsheet cell, accidentally listing Seay’s tragedy in the column designated for the name of his business.
You'd just type Lisa, hit enter, and msexcel (like a browser) can add the colourful commentary stored on the local computer, not necessarily even elsewhere inside that spreadsheet file.
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