Submitted by TheKeyboardKid t3_zsu5se in todayilearned
Yup. And so does the United States Postal Service. As soon as you hand over the change of address form they sell that info to data collectors. EVERY large organization and company sells your data. Don't even get me started on those "Loyalty Rewards" cards from the grocery store and Target. They are a goldmine to data brokers. Remember when you got to college and you started getting all those credit card applications? Yeah, the schools sold you out. On and on...
> Don't even get me started on those "Loyalty Rewards" cards from the grocery store and Target
That's why I just pool my purchases into [area code]-867-5309. Famous number that others can use too. It's all for the betterment of others, AND the companies get fed gibberish info from everyone.
And discounts on gas!
Unless you pay with cash for absolutely everything and are never caught on CCTV buying anything it doesn’t matter. I work on software that connects all those little dots.
I only barter in livestock and precious metals, have fun with that edge case
Dammit! Can’t let my boss see this or I’ll be responsible for creating this hellhole of a user story.
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Im a trader in kivas and trillium
John Oliver did a segment on Data Brokers a few months back that I found both horrifying and fascinating. The sophistication of the software needed to go through all of that data and connect those dots
It’s super interesting and as you said complex. Bit scared of it when I started at my company and now just resigned to the fact that it’s happening. From a technical side though it’s a very very interesting thing to work on, and how one company does it is very different from others. Some techniques are optimized for speed and real time queries while others are definitely more in depth and are built to provide extremely comprehensive data points.
Every Walmart sends many gigabytes of purchasing data back to HQ every day.
It'a kind of hilarious seeing the youngsters having no idea what that number is. I mean for christ sake I wasn't around in the 1960s but I've heard a fuckton of songs from that era, and Jenny was a #4 hit in 1981.
sigh I'm going to be singing that song to myself for the rest of the day now. Not sure whether you deserve an upvote or downvote for that.
Damn you Tommy Tutone!
In the 512 area code at Randall’s grocery store that number comes up as belonging to Rasputin. You can use it as gas stations and it often has 10-30 cents off in rewards per gallon.
Yes, gas discounts too!
I used to use 510-the-scam (510-843-7226). 510 because it was the HQ area code for Safeway, and I had friends that worked for corporate.
Because so many people used it you would get all sorts of extra discounts. You never knew if you'd get a free sandwich at the deli. It was fun. Eventually they shut that number down.
I went on holiday to the States recently, before I left I created myself a digital US phone number to use over there, the number for which had never before been used. For weeks that phone number never rang, no messages, nothing.
While in the States, I went to a Cheesecake Factory (for some cheesecake, obviously). There was a queue so I had to leave my phone number and wait to be texted or phoned or whatever.
I shit you not, just 10 minutes after giving them my phone number, the spam calls began. They kept going and going until I deactivated the number as soon as I was home. Much as I love cheesecake, fuck the Cheesecake Factory's data lack of protection.
You are absolutely correct. As soon as you used it at the Cheesecake Factory they knew it was an active number and they started in.
Not gonna lie, I'd still go back.
Fyi that number most likely was used before you.
Oh I didn’t know that either! Double TIL! Do you have a link to an article so not only I can see, but others can too?
>Have you ever wondered how junk mail follows you so easily when you move to a new address? How do credit card companies, catalogs, charities seeking money and everyone else all know when you have moved across town or across the country entirely?
>Whenever you fill out a change of address form with the United States Postal Service, the USPS adds your new details into a database of 160 million previous address changes over the past four years. The USPS has deals with data brokers to sell this data to anyone who pays, provided they have your old address. That means data firms cannot buy the address of Leroy Jones in Cincinnati, but can obtain his new address if they know where he used to live, which they usually do anyway.
And the USPS has a very poor history of safeguarding consumers data.
>The US Postal Service says it’s fixed a security weakness on usps.com that let anyone see the personal account info of its users, including usernames and street addresses. The open vulnerability was reportedly identified over a year ago by an independent researcher but USPS never patched it until this week, when Krebs on Security flagged the issue.
>The vulnerability included all 60 million user accounts on the website. It was caused by an authentication weakness in the site’s application programming interface (API) that allowed anyone to access a USPS database offered to businesses and advertisers to track user data and packages.
Source: USPS took a year to fix a vulnerability that exposed all 60 million users’ data
Thanks for the links to these articles…excellent info.
" Other companies incorporate the information into their comprehensive dossiers on almost all Americans (one leader in the field, Acxiom, recently said it would allow consumers to see their individual dossiers for the first time from the end of the summer)."
Is there any movement on this offer?
The latest one is every check out asking if you want them to email you receipt.
The anti-spam laws have an exception when contacting people with whom the company has an existing business relationship.
You bought something from them so they are in the clear to spam the fuck out of you.
That's why I have my junkmail@*****.com email. Sure, you can have it Ms. Clerk. Then they usually laugh.
They only sell the permanent move list. You can do a 6 month temporary move (and renew it for an additional 6 months) to avoid getting your address sold.
I was just going to post about the change of address thing. I just did mine and the correspondence they sent was filled with flyers for holiday sales from a random assortment of big companies. Like 20 of them alongside the one single side printed sheet of paper I was actually looking for.
Beyond that, the fact that you can see someone’s voter registration and such is all kinds of fucked
This is why I seed false mailing addresses to a lot of online stores. In fact, I do it to google constantly.
:3 No one knows where the fuck I am but the IRS, and even they needed to call twice to make sure I live at my address.
Hell I've PAID for my data to see if they knew anything relevant about me. And they don't. Nothing of interest. Basically "He likes video games and researching stuff" Past that it was either irrelevant information, or me being fucking 40. Which can from several alt accounts I made years back.
The IRS sells your data too lol.
I'm one of the engineers who set that up.
I’ve got the tar for this guy if someone else brings the feathers
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>Don't even get me started on those "Loyalty Rewards" cards from the grocery store and Target.
Don't forget those gas station locality cards that give you a discount on gas. Everyone wants to pay $0.10 less per gallon, until they realize you are only saving $1 for every 10 gallons you buy.
Hands over fake address cuz snail mail sux. Check mate
I love credit card mails though, some of the sign up bonuses can be better than what is currently available for everyone. Everything else I just toss, I use the usps emails to get a hint of what is coming.
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