
Brokers use ‘billions’ of data points to profile Americans - eplanit
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/brokers-use-billions-of-data-points-to-profile-americans/2014/05/27/b4207b96-e5b2-11e3-a86b-362fd5443d19_story.html
======
nthitz
Quick google search found this document detailing the various groups and
clusters that one of these brokers uses.

[http://reference.mapinfo.com/software/anysite_segmentation/e...](http://reference.mapinfo.com/software/anysite_segmentation/english/2_0_1/PersonicX_Binder.pdf)
[pdf]

Which cluster do you fit in?

~~~
kchoudhu
Oh man, search for "married sophisticate" and read the "day in the life of"
section for the group.

I wanted to kick someone's ass so badly after reading that.

~~~
voltagex_
There's something really unsettling about those sections but I can't quite put
my finger on it

~~~
kchoudhu
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's the way her life is built around buzzwords,
brands and hopeless consumerism.

~~~
voltagex_
I'm not sure, I got the same feeling from the other profiles.

~~~
blumkvist
That's because the vast majority of "western civilization" (and not only)
revolves around marketing lies.

We're all living in Amerika.

~~~
voltagex_
Ist wunderbar!

------
vosper
> “Consumers can’t manage this process by themselves,” Brill said. “It’s too
> big. It’s too complex. There are too many moving parts.”

As someone who works in ad-tech, for a company that uses some (anonymized)
data from brokers: I'm constantly astonished by the complexity of the
industry. It's certainly too complex for a consumer to figure out. I often
have a hard time remembering who talks to who and which companies go where.
Just take a look at this notorious (in ad-tech) infographic produced in 2010:

[http://www.adexchanger.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/09/LUMA-D...](http://www.adexchanger.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/09/LUMA-Display-Ad-Tech-Landscape-for-AdExchanger.jpg)

That's probably missing half the players and data flows, and it's also 4 years
out of date. Things haven't got simpler in that time.

~~~
stephengillie
You're going to throw about 200 brands at me and call it complex? Is this a
joke? Have these people heard of computers?

It's a flowchart. It looks like you haven't even tried to create a list of
players. If it's less complex than SQL double-hop then it's not complex.

~~~
vosper
I didn't create the chart. The point I was trying to make is that each of
these companies is a player in the industry and has either tracking data of
their own and/or they're connected (directly or indirectly) to various data
brokers. The chart greatly simplifies reality - it it represented all the
interconnections between individual companies it would be vastly more complex.
It can't do that because most of these connections are known only to the
companies involved.

------
DanielBMarkham
_“The extent of consumer profiling today means that data brokers often know as
much – or even more – about us than our family and friends, including our
online and in-store purchases, our political and religious affiliations, our
income and socioeconomic status, and more,”_

And this is where the NSA/FBI will go to collect data in the future. If,
miracle of miracles, we manage to get the government out of our daily lives,
they'll just write NSLs to these guys and in one swoop pick up tons of
information from dozens of sources -- including data about people we associate
with, since no warrant will be required.

These guys were doing "interesting" things when I last looked five years ago.
Who knows how bad it's gotten since then.

ADD: I've thought this thing through several times, and the only way forward I
see is either outlawing _any_ collection and aggregation of private data
outside of that directly needed to provide service, not ads -- or making all
information collected from any source publicly available to all. I don't see
the middle ground. (Sadly)

~~~
rayiner
I'm more worried about the people who don't need the NSL's to get access to
this data. Banks, credit card companies, employers, etc. There's a huge
potential for abuse that's more likely to affect your average person who isn't
a political dissident.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
It's good that we can worry about different things, but you're kind of making
my point for me -- if the information is available commercially, all you have
to do is 1) have a business relationship with the broker, and 2) punch in a
credit card number to get it, no matter who you are.

What we're seeing is that the brokers aren't very keen on having everybody and
their brother coming by to check out folks, so it's a quasi secret type of
information. That's the worst of both worlds.

By the way, I keep hearing that phone companies have already set up e-com
sites for Law Enforcement to retrieve phone tracking records (which do not
require a warrant) Punch in your department's credit card number, type in the
guys phone number, and get a record of everywhere he's been. Pretty cool stuff
if it's true, but, as I note, folks who do this stuff aren't very keen on
letting the rest of us in on the action.

~~~
rayiner
I'm not disagreeing with you on the meta-point. I'm just saying, even if
you're not afraid of the government you have reason to be afraid. As an aside,
I think HN gets this message backwards. I think it strikes a stronger chord
with people to talk about what their boss could do with this data than what LE
could do.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Don't know, don't care.

I find debating whether the ship struck the iceberg on the left-hand side or
the right-hand side a bit of a distraction from the effort underway to board
the lifeboats.

~~~
rayiner
Its relevant to convincing passengers the ship has a hole in it in the first
place.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
But it's not an either-or choice. In fact, the more approaches, the better. :)

------
ChuckMcM
_“You’d think if there was a real problem, they’d be able to talk about
something other than potential.”_

When the lobbyist starts talking in these terms I know they are worried. Sort
of 'prove we abuse it' challenges are common in the intelligence community.

That said though, what exactly would you want to be true here?

------
malandrew
You know what I would love to see as a solution to dealing with this threat:

A clearinghouse where everyone could register to receive every report from
every company collecting information on you, then a regulation that requires
all companies collecting and brokering information about you have a legal
obligation to send you all the information they have on you and keep you
updated of changes, and a report profiling the customers that bought that info
on you.

I doubt this market it going away, so the least we could do if require this
industry to keep us informed of the information on us and how it's used.

~~~
mynewwork
I don't see exactly what the threat here is. How am I being harmed by someone
choosing to show me an ad for something relevant to my interests than
something that's not?

I'm not saying that I'm not being harmed, just that I don't see it. Are
companies quoting me higher prices than if I was in the lowest-income bucket
or hiding lower-cost alternatives?

------
thrush
I recall reading somewhere that the leading data point predicting car
accidents was the driver's credit report, but this was decided to be private
information in that case so car insurance companies were forbidden from using
it. Where do you draw the line for this sort of information? It seems that PII
(or Personally Qualifying Information in this case) is quite easy to find if
there is someone trying hard enough to find it.

~~~
scott00
In the US it's common to use credit report information to price insurance,
definitely not forbidden in any way. I'm not sure about the rest of the world.
See

(1) [https://www.statefarm.com/about-us/company-
overview/company-...](https://www.statefarm.com/about-us/company-
overview/company-profile/insurance-industry-issues/use-of-credit-in-insurance-
scoring)

(2)
[http://www.allstate.com/about/credit.aspx](http://www.allstate.com/about/credit.aspx)

~~~
jojopotato
Credit score isn't allowed in pricing of insurance for a lot of states,
including California. It depends state to state though.

------
int19h
I once had a peek at a slide deck from another marketing services company,
with very imaginative cluster names.

If you're in Australia you should wonder if you'd be filed under "Bogan
Dreams". Or "Guns and Trucks" if you're in the US.

------
ajtaylor
The different segments mentioned in the article reminded me a LOT of what the
Cozzano's campaign managers in Neal Stephenson's Interface [1] did when
segmenting the population to target the campaign messages.

As a consumer, it's a bit terrifying how little control I have over this data.
It sounds like they have deeply personal details on people who have absolutely
no idea what has been collected and sold to marketers.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(novel)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_\(novel\))

~~~
Agustus
This is no different than what President's Organizing for America did:

 _The tool kit was custom-built for the 2012 Obama re-election campaign. It
digitally linked data on millions of American voters, including their email
addresses, through Dashboard as well as through social-media sites such as
Facebook and Twitter, to an army of staff and volunteers knocking on doors in
the key swing states._

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/14/obama-
digital-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/14/obama-digital-
campaigning-dashboard)

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-
digital-d...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-
machine-facebook-election)

------
esbranson
> _the system of commercial surveillance that draws on government records,
> shopping habits and social media postings_

Also, your cable television viewing habits. Probably your Internet viewing
habits (as seen by your ISP) and telephone habits as well. "Consent" in those
cases are called "terms of service" in common parlance.

