Re: [projectvrm] Data broker offers a peek behind the curtain

[Doc Searls < >]

My Acxiom profile is also off, and differs for Doc Searls and David Searls. 
In the book I also visited my profile with Rapleaf, which was so far off that 
it might as well have been a completely different person. 

In a way this is security not by obscurity or obfuscation but rather 
incompetence. If the NSA were to rely on Acxiom, Rapleaf, Google or even 
Amazon to find out all they need about any one of us, they might still be 
off. But they would know far more than they did in the pre-digital age.

Talked with Bruce Schneier last night. In respect to the NSA, he says things 
are far worse than they appear. That's the short of it. The long of it will 
provide plots for many future movies — some surely like past ones such as 
Brazil, which told Harry Buttle's story. (By coincidence Glenn Greenwald 
lives in Brazil, and Bruce just returned from there, where he got to see many 
of the Snowden documents.)

Doc


On Sep 9, 2013, at 10:19 AM, Brian Behlendorf 
<
 >
 wrote:

> 
> None of us want to be Harry Buttle, is all.
> 
> http://secretbunker.blogspot.com/2008/07/harry-buttle-meet-harry-tuttle.html
> 
> Brian
> 
> On Sun, 8 Sep 2013, Marc Lauritsen wrote:
>> This is one of those situations in which we can be offended both by how 
>> little they know and how much they know.  Either way, even more offensive 
>> is what the collectors do with
>> what they think they know.  And either way there's great impetus to avoid 
>> being tracked and to avoid having one's online experience sculpted by 
>> someone else's purported knowledge
>> about us.
>> On 9/8/2013 12:54 AM, John S James wrote:
>>      Almost no data on me, and what they have is garbage. I won't even 
>> bother to correct  it.
>> Completed  high school (it missed Harvard); income under $15,000 per year; 
>> 1 credit-card purchase in last 24 months -- give me a break!
>> Does NSA use this?
>> John
>> On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 5:45 PM, Dave Gray 
>> <
 >
>>  wrote:
>>      I checked my profile. They know next to nothing about me
>> Dave Gray
>> http://davegrayinfo.com
>> phone +1.415.683.6802 | fax +1-801-846-1408 | twitter @davegray
>> Let's keep in touch! Sign up to get occasional notes and updates from me.
>> On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 9:30 PM, T.Rob 
>> <
 >
>>  wrote:
>> 
>>      Anybody checked their profile yet?  Mine has some good data but is 
>> largely incorrect.  I helped my kids buy their current cars and these are 
>> the vehicles
>>      Acxiom believes I own.  No mention of my wife's car or my truck or 
>> sport bike.  My credit card and purchase data are almost null which is a 
>> hoot.  This
>>      suggests they rely on email addresses quite a bit and that my 
>> strategy of using a different one for each vendor is working.  I also use 
>> a service that
>>      generates unique credit card numbers for online purchases so they 
>> cannot correlate that way either.
>> 
>>       
>> 
>>      Two of three people responding to my Facebook post and two said they 
>> didn't even have profiles in the system.  The other one suspected it was 
>> just a way to
>>      harvest emails and scrub data.  I'm curious to see what more "normal" 
>> people say they find.
>> 
>>       
>> 
>>      -- T.Rob
>> 
>>       
>> 
>>       
>> 
>>      From: Dan Miller 
>> [mailto:
 ]
>>      Sent: Monday, September 02, 2013 23:45 PM
>>      To: Omer Tene
>>      Cc: Kevin Cox; Dave Gray; ProjectVRM list
>> 
>>      Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Data broker offers a peek behind the curtain
>>  
>> Omer. I was thinking the same thing. Like a "kick me!" Sticker on our 
>> butts. 
>> On Monday, September 2, 2013, Omer Tene wrote:
>> Also raises security problem. Without authenticated identities this is an 
>> invitation to harvest other people's data. 4 digits of social + DOB  = 
>> easy hack. 
>>  
>> From: Dan Miller 
>> <
 >
>> Date: Monday, September 2, 2013 5:47 PM
>> To: Kevin Cox 
>> <
 >
>> Cc: Dave Gray 
>> <
 >,
>>  ProjectVRM list 
>> <
 >
>> Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Data broker offers a peek behind the curtain
>>  
>> My first thought is that it is great publicity for Acxiom and it is 
>> clearly designed to head off direct criticism when they introduce new, 
>> more intrusive
>> services. The general tone of the editorial commentary is all too 
>> predictable. People can update/correct their info - but they won't. People 
>> could become
>> generally outraged at how much information is aggregated about them, but 
>> they're not. Acxiom could do a better job of making sure the info is 
>> accurate, but -
>> since they buy it from others - it isn't really Acxiom's responsibility.
>> The article doesn't even begin to talk about the mechanics and 
>> machinations a person has to go through to correct info in his or her 
>> publicly available files.
>> I've changed bad information, in TransUnion for instance, only to have the 
>> accurate info that I provide overwritten when the next batch of crap is 
>> bought from one
>> of the other info sources. And we all know that there really is no 
>> recourse.
>> Equating Do Not Track with doing some sort of hygiene on a rendition of 
>> your PII (which I think is one of the threads in this piece) is a bit of a 
>> contortion.
>> There's probably some Maslovian chart with a heirarchy of needs for 
>> privacy, accuracy, currency... that this doesn't begin to address.
>> -Dan
>>  
>> On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Kevin Cox 
>> <
 >
>>  wrote:
>> It is all a bit sad.  All this effort and they only needed to ask him to 
>> get the correct information - if it was in his interests to tell them.
>>  
>> Kevin
>>  
>> On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 11:02 PM, Dave Gray 
>> <
 >
>>  wrote:
>> Curious what people think of this:
>>  
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/business/a-data-broker-offers-a-peek-behind-the-curtain.html
>>  
>> Dave
>> --
>> Dave Gray
>> http://davegrayinfo.com
>>  
>> phone +1.415.683.6802 | fax +1-801-846-1408 | twitter @davegray
>> Let's keep in touch! Sign up to get occasional notes and updates from me.
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> --
>> John S. James
>> www.aidsnews.org
>> www.RepliCounts.org