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Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

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Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#21

Post by Jim- »

totalrobe wrote: post #17

NC does the same thing. And if you buy a house, expect to receive endless junk mail disguised as mortgage documentation.

FWIW, I've had a similar experience. So I was curious who sold my information and did some digging (was it my realtor, insurance agent, or title agent?). I asked each of them, they all denied it, but told me:

When you buy a house, all your info is public information on your county's website (most up to date counties). Unfortunately, I don't think you can stop them from publishing that information and having bots scrape that data to send you junk mail.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#22

Post by dqv »

totalrobe wrote: post #17

NC does the same thing. And if you buy a house, expect to receive endless junk mail disguised as mortgage documentation.

Seriously. I can't believe the mail doesn't violate some kind of FTC regulation about impersonating your mortgage lender. So many of the mailpieces were designed in such a way that I almost believed it was coming from the lender and not some third party company that wants me to buy a warranty.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#24

Post by Ephiiz »

SHAKEDECADE wrote: post #9

I want to be outraged, But feel helpless. What can I do about this?

It really doesn't seem like there is anything you can do. Sure you can talk to your representative, but why are they going to bother dealing with something that such a small margin of their voters care about?

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#25

Post by smt88 »

Jim- wrote: post #21
totalrobe wrote: post #17

NC does the same thing. And if you buy a house, expect to receive endless junk mail disguised as mortgage documentation.

FWIW, I've had a similar experience. So I was curious who sold my information and did some digging (was it my realtor, insurance agent, or title agent?). I asked each of them, they all denied it, but told me: When you buy a house, all your info is public information on your county's website (most up to date counties). Unfortunately, I don't think you can stop them from publishing that information and having bots scra…

Large, secured loans are recorded in public ledgers by law. I believe the motivation was to prevent people from going around and securing multiple loans with the same asset, before credit-scoring agencies existed.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#26

Post by crankylinuxuser »

Maarten88 wrote: post #18
CGamesPlay wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What did they expect it to be used for? Genealogy reports? /s Serious answer, but I'd guess background checks and such?

> background checks Without explicit consent from the person being checked? That still seems to be a privacy violation to me.

Well, with Republican state governments cutting all traditional income means (read: taxes) how else are they to afford to run?

This is 77m dollars. Yeah its horrible that your data is being sold. But there's no privacy amendment in the USA. And state budgets are suffering.

Seems like raising taxes and voting better people would go quite a ways to stopping these practices from becoming normalized.

(Edit: for those of you who've -1'ed me, it represents the same game theory that plays out in the electorate for those states. Most states are run by Republicans - fact. Any politicians, primarily Democrats, whom suggests higher taxation are blackballed. Nobody wants higher taxes. Yet, the states can't print money, but still need it. This is how we get into these situations. Game theory 101.

And the -1's, show that. Because, how dare I suggest raising taxes and making these crooked uses of information=>money exfiltration illegal.)

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#27

Post by smt88 »

SHAKEDECADE wrote: post #9

I want to be outraged, But feel helpless. What can I do about this?

Call your reps. Seriously. It makes a difference.

Write an op-ed for your local paper.

Volunteer to register voters.

Subscribe to investigative news outlets and donate to ProPublica.

Attend marches and rallies.

You aren't powerless, but you have to exercise your power whether it's on the winning side or not. All battles in a democracy are losing battles until they aren't, but the tables don't turn unless people join.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#28

Post by jedberg »

Jim- wrote: post #21
totalrobe wrote: post #17

NC does the same thing. And if you buy a house, expect to receive endless junk mail disguised as mortgage documentation.

FWIW, I've had a similar experience. So I was curious who sold my information and did some digging (was it my realtor, insurance agent, or title agent?). I asked each of them, they all denied it, but told me: When you buy a house, all your info is public information on your county's website (most up to date counties). Unfortunately, I don't think you can stop them from publishing that information and having bots scra…

Most counties redact your name from their public website. But they don’t actually need that anyway. Your credit report has the address of the house and how much you owe on the mortgage.

And the credit agencies will sell your info to anyone.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#29

Post by aschmid »

maxheadroom wrote: post #2

> The I-Team wanted to know how much of that money came from marketing firms, but the agency in charge of driver information estimated it would take 154 hours of research and cost nearly $3,000 for the state to give taxpayers an answer. I'm no rocket scientist but $3,000 (USD) is less than $77M (USD), yeah? > That’s because Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles said companies buying data on Floridia…

Definitely the two most disturbing quotes from the article. They're admitting that citizens' data has been sold to so many companies that it's going to take 154 hours of research just to figure out which companies it was sold to.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#30

Post by chopin »

Tepix wrote: post #15
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many European countries are the same, e.g. governments made sure GDPR doesn't apply to them. For example in Germany government sells data.

What data are you referring to? Is it comparable to this personal data?

In Germany, you are required to be registered where you live. The authority collecting this data (Einwohnermeldeamt) is allowed to reveal parts of this data (addresses) to requesting parties for a fee and under some restricting circumstances (you can opt out, see https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bmg/__44.html).
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