Slashdot Mirror
This Company Has Built a Profile On Every American Adult (bloomberg.com)
Reader schwit1 writes: Every move you make. Every click you take. Every game you play. Every place you stay. They'll be watching you. IDI, a year-old company in the so-called data-fusion business, is the first to centralize and weaponize all that information for its customers. The Boca Raton, Fla., company's database service, idiCORE, combines public records with purchasing, demographic, and behavioral data. Chief Executive Officer Derek Dubner says the system isn't waiting for requests from clients -- it's already built a profile on every American adult, including young people who wouldn't be swept up in conventional databases, which only index transactions. 'We have data on that 21-year-old who's living at home with mom and dad,' he says.
Good luck finding me in my mom's basement!
Ironic. The link to the article begins by complaining about my use of an ad blocker in my browser. So what was newsworthy about that article again? Shameless linking of online behaviour and personality profile? You wonder how they got all that data.
To get some good privacy laws passed?
'Cause it really creeps me out that a coupon site is being used to confirm information. And aside from that aspect, which seems to be setup to prey on the poor and less fortunate, that the company
"...including young people who wouldnâ(TM)t be swept up in conventional databases...".
That says to me they're going after children under 18 and doing so on purpose.
Of course they'd not show an example to the reporter. That'd either expose some proprietary info or that they're full of shit. Either way, this thing should be shut down.
If I put up a chart of someone's activities, they call me a stalker, but if a company does it, it is called smart business. 2 sets of rules. Greed is great. Fuck me moar.
I have a different idea. I think Congress should pass a law saying such information always remains your property, and that every access of it for the purposes of making profit by any authorized entity must see you paid 50% of the gross revenue generated. Unauthorized access sees you paid 95%. Lack of payment by any company is regarded as theft, and will be prosecuted as a criminal offense.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Um no. They aren't the first. There are many. Acxiom is the biggest and has been doing it for over 50 years. This sounds like someone new looking to get some VC money.
Unauthorized access sees you paid 95%.
Make that 5000% and we can start talking about there being some downsides to tracking (for the tracker).
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
companies like this are also referred to as brand chasers or culture moguls, or brand identity teams. Every one of them touts the same crap, it just sounds like this one ran out of clients and is trying to court law enforcement that want to skirt the constitution.
is the first to centralize and weaponize all that information for its customers
bullshit. quantrics started this crap (technically socci too), then companies like Target, Ralphs, and Best Buy decided to bring it in house and make it proprietary, literally bankrupting them overnight.
The Boca Raton, Fla., company's database service, idiCORE, combines public records with purchasing, demographic, and behavioral data.
take a company, base it in boca or delaware, or branson, or somewhere mind-numbing data entry jobs pay nothing, and then spin it as a service that does (surprise) something that every modern corporation has been doing for 30 years. demographic and behavioral are so vague as to mean anything from "we had an elementary school focus group" to "we sit around and pay people to watch BET all day."
including young people who wouldn't be swept up in conventional databases
bingo, this is how you know its a bullshit target market research company. the blind spots of the 18-32 demographic are a gold mine businesses have been spending billions on for 25 years or longer. the truth is we really do not know why some of these audiences fail brand permanence, brand awareness, or our consumer confidence and profile metrics other than (gasp) they probably just arent interested in the product. but thats not good enough. middle manager mike needs you to buy the brand, and we need to pretend we have that solution.
'We have data on that 21-year-old who's living at home with mom and dad,'
yeah? so does everyone else. hes the fucking loss-leader and you work hard to exclude him from your brand experience. he has no pull with his parents (that ended at 17) and he has a caustic persona that can destroy the brand as any Axe bodyspray marketing team can attest to. You lump him into your 'subculture urban' market and bingo, youve just fucked an entire segment out of a product by appealing to something diametrically opposed to people with limited income. you can sell this guy credit cards and maybe some fast food...and thats about it. he downloads all his music, drives a 20 year old toyota, and plays freemium games on his iphone 4-5 waiting for his cheese to grill.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Within the past few years, some former college football and basketball players sued the NCAA successfully. For over a decade, officially licensed college football and basketball games were produced by EA Sports. The games didn't include player names but the uniform numbers, positions, physical attributes, and player skills, which were clearly derived from the real athletes. No names or actual player photos were used, but the court still decided that everything else constituted an unauthorized use of the likeness of players, who had not licensed that use. Because EA Sports and the NCAA used that information for profit without license from the players, the court decided they were entitled to compensation. If this company is profiting by selling profiles of people they have built without a license from those people, it still seems to be an unauthorized use of a person's likeness. I'm not sure new legislation is required, just for someone to test this idea in court with existing laws.
Good. Keep building those databases. Hoover up as much data as you can. Soon it won't be worth the disk drives you're storing it on.
I still get plenty of companies trying to sell me an extended warranty on a car I haven't owned in years.
I still get plenty of companies trying to sell me services for a job I haven't had in more than a decade.
It's cheap and easy to get data. It's hard and expensive to keep it clean. A few more years of this explosive growth in personal data availability and it will all turn to garbage.
I don't recall signing an authorization for my data to be used this way. Nor did I engage in informed consent with any of the vendors that have disclosed this information to this third party--how about we just figure out who is selling them data and sue a few of them into bankruptcy? It'll scare away other potential sellers and take this predatory organization down.
Who did what now?
Yeah, as usual this is just another hyped-up clickbait summary. When you read TFA, you find that what they actually claim to have is:
All KNOWN addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses (jeez, they know stuff they know)
Propery bought and sold, including mortgages (public records stuff)
Vehicles owned (public records)
Criminal record (public records)
Voter registration (public records)
Hunting permits (public records)
They also claim to have 'biilions of photographs from private companies with license plate scanners'. Kind of doubtful, companies don't give that info away for free, and why would they buy it if they don't need it.
Oh, and the 'every purchase' bullshit? Well, they own a couple of coupon companies, and IF you sign up for their coupons they ask for stuff like email and birthday, and IF you use those coupons when you buy something they know what you bought. No shit.
Big Bad Government won't prevent you from going to the school of your choice.
Or buying a first home
Or getting a car loan
or asking for a raise
But these people will, if there is enough profit in offering a dataset that maximizes someone else's profit at your expense.