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Data Mining Amazon.com Wish Lists
Dr. Webster writes "In his article "Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists," Tom Owad of Applefritter outlines a way in which one could build detailed personal profiles of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens in a matter of hours. Reading habits, personal tastes and even political party affiliation could be inferred from the results, and through the use of Yahoo! People and Google Maps, one could even map out geographically where people with certain interests or affiliations live, down to their address. Most surprisingly, the process of doing this is completely legal, and doesn't even violate Amazon's Conditions of Use."
Did you RTFA?
He maps out (using google maps) the locations of the people who read certain books.
A lot of these wishlists have a city, state, full name and birthdate attached to them... which is more than enough for google to give you a street address (though not always with 100% accuracy)
Just to test it, i randomly picked a 'sarah' who had a wishlist. Turns out there's only one Sarah Johnson in Portland, OR.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
In my county in NC, if you want a party affiliation all you need to do is look it up on the public records website:f m
http://www.co.durham.nc.us/common/PublRecordsdB.c
You can also figure out how much someone's house is worth, what they paid in taxes, etc.
It starts to get a little scary though when your search for public records reveals mortage applications with the individual's SS# listed on the sheet. All available online, and provided for by your very own government!