Re: [projectvrm] "marketing countermeasures" for customers

[Don Marti < >]

begin Christopher Carfi quotation of Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 10:53:17PM -0700:
> thought-provoking stuff from the hoosier contrarian:
> 
> http://hoosiercontrarian.com/2009/04/12/
> social-identity-in-the-21st-century-time-for-individual-countermarketing-tools/
> 
> i do a little of this by using plus addressing on my emails, so i can track 
> who
> has sold my email address to whom.  what other countermeasures are there? 
> what's possible?

Lots and lots.  Trade Safeway cards, sign up the
CEOs of companies that do hinky marketing for
those "win a car" mall promotions, do creative
character development on your warranty registration
cards -- in the 1980s some joker even registered
"Michael M. Mouse" for Selective Service, giving
the address of Disneyland.  (The Disney Company
wrote back that Mr. Mouse was too old to have
to register.)  On the web, try userscripts.org
and http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions for
countermeasures.

The problem with spoofing marketing data is that
it usually doesn't feed into some elite Marketing
statistics analysis process.  The numbers get dragged
out and made into one pie chart on one PowerPoint
presentation, if they help the marketing person
making the presentation make his or her point.
So most spoofing probably goes to waste.

-- 
Don Marti                                 +1 510-332-1587 mobile
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/

 
See you at OpenSource World: August 11-13, 2009 in San Francisco