You're going to sit across a desk in an interview with someone who knows absolutely everything about everywhere you've ever surfed at any time in your life, or at least, as deep as that person cares to know.
If you can earn more for Google than the cost of your salary, do they care? My guess is probably not.
Amazon.com is funny that way. They offered me a whole page of dildos for mother's day and followed it up with an email with an electric wall plug in model. Which is pretty funny on it's face, since my purchasing history right before that day was three knives, a bayonet and a shotgun sling.
Maybe shotgun slings and dildos are often purchased together?
FYI the Numbers from 987-65-4320 to 987-65-4329 are reserved for use in advertisements and are useful when you are also using a fake name and address to go along with it.
I discovered that I'm an 81 year old married German man that drives a 2007 Mitubishi Eclipse Spyder Convertible with a Household income of $50,000 - $74,999, who has a special interest in women's appar
Would you say, sir, that that accurately describes your present situation?
My god, it's some of the same info I give to my brokerage when I call them on the phone.
And it's available to anyone with access to credit check services. If that's all the information that your broker is using to identify you, I suggest that you find a new broker. At the very least they should be asking you for a password and giving you a bit of secret information that you've previously given to them to help you confirm that you're dealing with your broker and not somebody impersonating your broker. This would all be in addition to whatever security questions are required (preferably ones made up by you custom).
I take it you are not the beneficiary of any insurance policy and never held a job?
That might not be as uncommon as you think here on Slashdot where the hackers lair is often still located in Mom's basement (-3d6 gp of usual treasure to account for poor conditions).
You just keep right on telling yourself that.
Damn right. Most people, no matter what precautions they take or where in the world they live, can be found for a few thousand dollars and most Americans can be found for much, much less. It's much more practical to muddy the information they already have about you by mixing plausible lies in with the truth. If they have nothing then sure, go ahead and lie completely but if they already know part of the story, make sure that you fill in the rest with false or misleading information.
I must confess that I'm not up on current retail prices, but surely there are resellers who have volume accounts and can run queries on your behalf while passing on at least some of their volume savings to you. Private Investigators probably fall into that category for example. Even so, as others have pointed out, that information is also likely available from other sources if you've ever made a purchase online using your credit card.
Maybe I just need to poison the data some more.
Couldn't hurt. Although I always use completely fake details when they don't already have at least some information on me already. A good source for fake ID information that will pass most sanity checks like zip code and address combinations or state and area codes is Fake Name Generator. As for the debt collectors, ask them to provide information concerning the debt, such as when it was first incurred, without giving out or confirming any information about yourself. If they refuse then tell them that the person they're looking for cannot be reached at your number or address, which is the truth in your case right? If they disclose the age of the debt and it's beyond the statute of limitations for collection you wouldn't be obligated to pay even if it was your debt and it can be a violation of law for them to continue calling depending upon where you live. Finally, you should note the number that they're calling from so that you can add it to your blocked call list on your phone account. The caller id number might be spoofed, but it couldn't hurt. While your at it you should also set your phone account to 'unblock or I won't take your call'. That way, you don't get 'private call' in the caller ID if they actually want to ring through.
No, what they really seem to want is to collect your name, email, home address, DOB and last four digits of your SSN.
Do you honestly believe that they don't already have a database with that information on every American that has ever applied for credit, filed a tax return, paid property taxes or had anything delivered to their home ever? If you think that that information is private, you've got another thing coming. It's all for sale from the likes of Lexis Nexis, Choicepoint or any number of others in the data business.
For extra confusion, try and find people in the same general geographic region with the same or similar name to yours and use bits and pieces of that information when filling out non-essential forms and such. The goal is to trick their databases into confusing you with somebody else when all they have is the name and not the SSN so that your profile becomes a confused jumble of inaccurate, false, misleading and cross pollinated information from many other real and fake people with the same or similar names. Obviously, this works better if your surname and first name are relatively more common.
why the hell would I give it to the exact people I don't want to have it?
They already have the minimum biographical info that they're asking for, that's public information unless you're in the witness protection program. What they don't have is the other related data which they're asking you to update for them. Now of course you wouldn't want to correct their inaccurate records of your other data, but it's nice to see that all of the disinformation and database poisoning is having its intended effects.
And in order to see the data they have about me, I have to give them my name, home address, last four digits of my SSN? Seriously?
If you think that the data brokers like Lexis Nexis, Choicepoint and these guys don't already have all of that information and more, you're sadly misinformed. Would it shock to know that all of that information is readily available to just about any business owner or attorney for $50 or less and nothing more than a promise (by them to the data broker) that you said that you wanted to do business with them or are a client of theirs?
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
