Security → This Company Has Built a Profile on Every American Adult

 
»www.bloomberg.com/news/a ··· an-adult

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...For more than a decade, professional snoops have been able to search troves of public and nonpublic records---known addresses, DMV records, photographs of a person's car---and condense them into comprehensive reports costing as little as $10. Now they can combine that information with the kinds of things marketers know about you, such as which politicians you donate to, what you spend on groceries, and whether it's weird that you ate in last night, to create a portrait of your life and predict your behavior.

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....

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This really sucks, but there doesn't seem to be anything illegal about it.

Tim

It's one thing to note Bob's car at that business during office hours, but to start stalking Bob and his vehicle's locations (and him by correlation) and then sell that information to any buyer (which includes the police), you step beyond public information gathering to committing the criminal act of stalking.
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Society progresses one funeral at a time
Knowledge and curiosity are not crimes and those who are curious should not be treated like criminals. »www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Just wait till it's hacked.

Maybe it's time to spy on the spymasters. I wonder how Derek would feel if I posted all his data online including his kids. Actually, I would leave his family out of it. I happen to have a few scruples, anyway. Which disqualifies me from being a CEO or a politician. It would be interesting to know if they have profiles on themselves or their employees, family etc.
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Ingenious will probably succeed. Stupid will probably fail. But really really stupid is guaranteed to succeed.

Anyone want a "Big Data, the Problem and Solution to All Life's Problems" tshirt?

...and it says it's done this for Americans. Wonder how many people outside of America it's caught? Just out of morbid curiousity.

My Cynical 00000010bits

Regards

Well, that's all right then.

I've warned people for years to avoid surveys, shopper clubs, and to keep your opinion to yourself when you aren't anonymous. People by nature are chatty and like to state options and information, that's a flaw in the modern age. Sure, I pay more for stuff from the drug store but that's the price of not selling out my soul to advertisers.

Also check Opt-Out, it's everywhere! Opt-Out of Costco shopper data sharing. Opt-Out of your cable carrier spying. Opt-Out of your cellular carrier spying. For example with T-Mobile you can find a toggle for things like deep telemetry, targeted advertising and other things. Slide that over to 'disable' for peace of mind. SOME counties even allow you to opt-out of public/online posting of your county records. (check) I never opt-in unless I absolutely have to in order to use a product/service, then once I am done I opt-out and walk away.

I've paid to have a look at my data at some of the bigger sites and it's incredible outdated, outright incorrect or in most cases, simply not there to see. Often if I can't prevent a leak I will use forged information which really seems to cause issues for the big data mining firms. I started doing this years and years ago but I think more and more people will wise up as time goes on. It's MUCH harder to recover your privacy than to prevent privacy loss in the first place IMO.

I don't take it the level of paying more for an identical product than my neighbor but anonymity or at least confusion keeps me in my comfort zone.

e.g., when a store clerk addresses me as "Mr José" I don't correct them because one of the names attached to one of my loyalty cards at that store is "Noway José".

I use names of fictional characters when signing up for such crap. And their address, when one exists. Otherwise I make shit up.
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Opera reborn -- »vivaldi.com

"Dubner says most Americans have little to fear."

I feel better.

Well u probably just get marked as political/social dissadent and are awaiting further scrutiny for all that. The algorithms for those that don't fit are probably already churning away. Enjoy while u can

Ding Ding Ding

I've noted this a few times in various forums as DSLR.

It has nothing to do with modern technology - the amount of otherwise unrelated data that already exists, even from pre-internet times, is phenomenal. There are some specific global corporations that have already obtained, continue to obtain, and now correlate such information. To learn that there is a company specifically for this is not surprising - in fact it is more surprising that it took so long for this to become realized and made public.

Driver's licenses, car registrations, insurance (auto, home, health), utilities (water, electric, gas, oil, phone, internet, tv, mobile, etc), bank accounts, credit cards, loans/mortgages, customer loyalty/discount cards/clubs, magazine/newspaper/periodical subscriptions, charity donations, national census and other surveys, employment records, armed services records, postal records, civil service records, financial securities, college/higher-level education records, birth certificates, passport applications, voter registrations, and many more bits of information are all open game and all completely independent of any online/internet activity.

I have personally seen the knowledge that can be derived from such records through big data, and it is beyond frightening. Then toss in online/internet activity and the mind wants to explode. There are many that think simple obfuscation keeps them private, but I have also seen technologies that can leverage such otherwise-apparent random activity to even better identify individuals.

One of the most mis-directed and mis-understood concepts is that of "public record" and attempts at obscuring such information.

These services will only provide the raw data they have. Sadly in modern times that means very little, and the derivations, correlations, and other learned associations will be kept private. This leads to a false sense of security on the part of the consumer, as they think that such "incorrect data" is actually keeping them anonymous. In growing numbers, one's "anonymous" identities are being associated with their real identities, and simply based on the fact that such detail is "anonymous" means it would not be otherwise disclosed in such "public information" requests.

Unfortunately all of that derived data is considered private and proprietary and never needs to even be acknowleged. Such companies welcome continued attempts at obfuscation, since despite individual beliefs/expectations that they can subvert such systems they are actually helping such association and learning.

At a conference last year I had seen a demo from a major three-letter non-technology corporation that primarily sells technology that was able to predict "false" answers to a survey from specific individuals with a startling amount of accuracy. Such "false" answers were those expected from those that intentionally tried to hide their identity in answering such surveys.

The human mind is far more predictable than one might think, particularly when provided with such a vast field of seemingly random data that is now the heart of "big data".

Very very sobering.

That seems to be a strange way to look at it. Consider when, say, property records were papers in drawers in filing cabinets in large buildings. Sure they were publically accessible - but it took effort to travel to the right town and find the right piece of paper. Now it's searchable online by (essentially) anyone, anywhere. The data haven't changed, the fact that it's public hasn't changed: but now as a practical matter it's accessible where it was not accessible before.

Doesn't the use of technology change the game entirely? The problem is correlation, and the modern technology enables, or at least drastically lowers the cost, of correlation.

So, I'd say it has everything to do with modern technology. Maybe I'm missing your point?

Perhaps I should have worded it differently.

The point is that there is already a tremendous amount of information that already has been collected and already exists, even without the internet and online activity.

There are some that think that by simply trying to remain anonymous or otherwise trying to obfuscate their online usage they are clear of such data mining, when in reality they are not. That was what I was trying to convey. It is not about the technology that individuals may use personally on a day-day basis since a significant portion of personal data already exists.

With our phones, cars, isps, and computers beaming up virtually everything we do and everything we say, it's a huge game changer in data collection. As are facial and voice recognition. No doubt that corps will soon get legislation passed allowing them drones everywhere watching everything.

All under the guise of no personally identifiable info - which today's tech and minds make nearly impossible.

I'm suddenly reminded of Michael Crichton's print version of Jurassic Park -- Ian Malcolm had a rant to this
effect (probably anecdotal) that went something to the effect "Von Neumman et al thought that by having a computer,
a machine that could handle alot of variables, you could predict anything. But Chaos Theory throws that out the
window."

For some reason your post reminded me of that, and I just had to share that. Just ignore me

And I agree with previous poster, I know all too well what the Road to Hell is paved with...

Regards

Google your name and the city in which you live. If you're anything like me, you'll find more than a few data brokers selling your personal information. And sometimes giving away lists of relatives, past addresses, etc. for free.

Nothing is sacred anymore: »www.computerworld.com/ar ··· ers.html
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"If you want to remain slaves of the bankers and pay for the costs of your own slavery, let them continue to create money and control the nation’s credit." - Josiah Stamp

Big data is a big problem because we never regulated it before the digital nuclear genie was out of the bottle.

Just look how ISPs cry for their lobbyist when the FCC tries to clamp down on the sharing. And their Republicunt and Democrap toadies all come to their side.
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Filan - Aurin Spellslinger - Pago - Team Legacy

The fallacy I believe in this is that if the technology is that good and in active deployment, then there is no point in even ASKING the question. More based in reality is it was a 'conference' with powerpoints talking up something that they probably can't even feasibly implement on a wide scale. I know the three letter bimbos like to 'brag' and 'boast' about magical things they can do but the reality is that boasting itself is largely part of their manipulation. They like to vastly overstate ability which itself can be used as a manipulation/PsyOP tool. "Oh well, they can see that anyway, so why bother to try and be private/anon?". Or even reversed to steer people to specific areas of intelligence gathering (honeypot).. "We simply cannot break Zoho Mail!".. Then the target subjects "Guys, did you read that? Everyone switch to Zohomail!". The reality in these cases is probably that they are much less nimble as they claim to be, and quite a bit less adept in some areas than they'd like to be.

As for public data gathering engines a few people mentioned.. It's possible to get your names off of these. In some cases it's as easy as pasting your link into their privacy policy page. The best example of this is I can't find my real information on any of the common privacy snooping clearinghouses. You do need to check once or twice a year to make sure they didn't add anything back.

Kim Komando has a good 'starter' article on how to do this for a few of the big boys. There are also services out there that do it for you for a small fee. I've had some trouble removing some data in the past but paid a small amount for a firm to do it for me and to re-check everyone else. It worked wonderfully.

»www.komando.com/tips/912 ··· -web/all

That's a good one. I should start to use it. Also I use 4 layers of emails;

»www.my10minutemail.com
Disposable, used once or twice, less than an hour. This is what I use for the 'vast majority' of online registrations I care nothing about.

»www.yopmail.com/en/
Long term disposable emails. Used for 'required' trash registrations I can't avoid but need further access to.

»www.fastmail.com
Regular email, forums, game registrations, other stuff where having a good spam/av filter is needed but I don't necessarily overly care about the privacy. 'general catch-all'

»tutanota.com
»www.startmail.com/
Zero-Knowledge, strong privacy, strong encryption. This is where anything important will go through.

I use this fun site to create endless fake identities. (with required IT security in place when doing so)
»www.fakenamegenerator.com

"Driver's licenses, car registrations, insurance (auto, home, health), utilities (water, electric, gas, oil, phone, internet, tv, mobile, etc), bank accounts, credit cards, loans/mortgages, customer loyalty/discount cards/clubs, magazine/newspaper/periodical subscriptions, charity donations, national census and other surveys, employment records, armed services records, postal records, civil service records, financial securities, college/higher-level education records, birth certificates, passport applications, voter registrations, and many more bits of information are all open game and all completely independent of any online/internet activity." to get most of that, it would have to be gotten by illegal means!!..

...and we aren't allowed to look at even our own information this company has on us.

most of what was listed I believe is public record just not centralized in one location.
so nothing particularly shocking or special there.

It does concern me about DMV records I thought that was only accessible internally and thru LE

Im kinda curious what it says about me, but not curious enough to actually try and find out.
I'd never offer up a email address to a coupon site.. to many of them exist with open listings.
If I did it would just be a mailinator address anyway.

what I quoted can't be gotten without an illegal means used!!.. especially those records kept by the Government, you'd either have to hack in, or misrepresent yourself big time to get those!!..

The thing is this kind of data collection has its origins in the credit industry. Companies with questionable ethics like Experian and Transunion. Heck today some companies want facebook logins when someone applies, And giving them that is technically against the TOS.
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Filan - Aurin Spellslinger - Pago - Team Legacy