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Take Big Brother on Vacation with You

Posted by michael on from the be-good-for-goodness-sake dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Book a flight or a rental car, and that trip and your companions' names, where you stay, what you eat, your bed size preference, in-room movie preference, and just about anything else you get a receipt for is etched in stone."

2 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Data Protection by grahammm · · Score: 5, Informative

    Keeping the data forever would be against the law (Data Protection Act) in the UK and I suspect also in rest of Europe.

  2. Commerical data collection on PBS by MyNameIsFred · · Score: 5, Informative

    Several years ago, PBS had a show on various companies that collect data on consumers and the methods they use. A few points they discussed:
    1) There are companies that send employees to courthouses to collect data from public records, e.g., real estate sales, births and deaths, etc. (For anyone with a child, this is why you magically gets the first birthday photo coupons in the mail. For home buyers, this is why you get coupons from the local Home Depot.)
    2) Everyone is aware of data collected thru credit cards, but there are other sources. Everytime you use your frequent buyer card at the grocey store, they know who you are and what you buy. Similar things occur with similar cards at other stores.
    3) There are companies that specialize in correlating the above data with census records. Publically available census records provide average income and other information for each zip code in the U.S.
    Add this to airline databases, and credit card info, and you have your life history.