Comment It'll kill the wart, but keep the virus (Score 1) 381
Companies like Harte-Hanks and Conversant compile consumer databases from multiple sources, then match them to build more robust records.
So, every time you buy napkin rings at Crate&Barrel they'll ask for your ZIP. They'll send in along with your purchase history and the name from your credit card to some transactional database. That db will get matched to a master db--and, viola, C&B knows who you are, where you are, what you're spending, how you're paying, and what you're buying.
Then, C&B might sell that db to HH for a whack of cash, and HH will link it to a USPS and census files. The latter contribute your most recent mailing address and demographic data. Plus, they'll match it against other purchased files, so a single file will tell them who you are, where you travel, where you shop, what you buy, how much you spend, where you live, how old you are, what degrees you have, your gender and ethnicity, and a bunch of other things like whether you're divorced and what your kids' names are. They also used to link the files to credit card information, but that's nominally illegal now.
Why do they do this? So that they can sell the fat bundle to Pier 1 for two whacks of cash.
If you ever get an unsolicited catalog in the mail that actually looks kinda cool, just remember that it means somebody's got a damned big data file on you.
And you can call companies like Pier 1 and tell them to take you off the list (despite the fact that they can mine their customer dbs daily, they'll take six weeks to delist you--but they will delist you), but that won't take it off of the lists of pimps like Harte-Hanks, who are still selling you to other companies. Regulation is the only hope for data protection. ChoicePoint is the Enron of the data pimping industry, and we can only hope that it leads to a sort of Sarbanes-Oxley Act for data pimping companies. Make it happne: write your senator.
