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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

#91

Post by howard941 »

awakener62 wrote: post #86

This is very annoying and disappointing. I am a resident in the Tampa, Fl area. There is no other option where I can get a new driver's licensed renew the title for my vehicle. Since I'm finding out about this now my guess is there is no opt-out option either. This sucks because I get rid of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp trying to secure my self a little bit. But I just get screwed in another way.

Welcome to Tampa! There's an opt out link at the bottom of the article that leads to one of the data users.

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

#92

Post by itake »

dontbenebby wrote: post #81

This is pretty bad. The usual argument of " if you don't like it don't use Facebook/Google/(insert company here) " doesn't apply here. You have to interact with the government to get a DL, there are no competitors. Therefor government services should treat personal information with the utmost respect and discretion, not sell it off to the highest bidder.

In Florida, its not personal though and its not just DMVs. Basically if the government has your information, anyone can submit a FOIA request to get it. This is particularly bad with licensed professionals (Real Estate agents, hair saloon cutters, etc.) that have to have a business license to operate.

You can get the contact information (email, home address, phone number) for all of these individuals b/c its required by law for you to provide that and it be publicly listed.

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

#93

Post by LeifCarrotson »

asark wrote: post #63
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38

Been happening for decades. When I got my driver's license (in the 1980's) in Iowa, they misspelled my name - Soseph instead of Joseph. I asked for a corrected license. They typed up another one but didn't go back and correct the record. So, I got solicitations in the mail for months for Soseph Altmaier. And that was before computers were used much.

I don't get why IRL mail spam is still allowed. It's a fucking nuisance. 95% of the mail I get is junk mail. Another 4% is recurring bill notices or something similarly low-value (yeah, I could probably make some of those go away by logging into whatever-it-is and checking a box somewhere, but it's overwhelmed by the junk mail anyway). Maybe 1% is something I actually care about. And I get a lot of mail. I'd pay a fe…

The egregious wastefulness of USPS junk mail is annoying and obvious, but at least it is visible to the average consumer. The wastefulness of online advertising is more insidious, because the average consumer does not see that their router is dutifully transmitting megabytes of tracking code, to be interpreted by their computer, to be filtered by ad block or (obnoxiously) shown to them. Just browsing your local newspaper site is similar in terms of wastefulness to recieving a handful of junk mailers.

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

#94

Post by asark »

cgriswald wrote: post #89
asark wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back of the envelope (haha) we're talking somewhere in the range of $10-20/person/month, gross. Say half that after costs incurred by actually transporting and delivering that bulk mail (so, 50% profit, which seems high but is fine for the sake of argument). I dunno about you, but I wouldn't just vote for a $5-10/month tax to eliminate junk mail entirely , I'd go door-to-door campaigning for it. I'd make signs. I'd c…

You've neglected methods and cost of enforcement. Getting rid of the bulk rate for spam would help tremendously, but even at higher rates it's still going to be profitable for a lot of companies. Real estate, credit card, and automobile companies are the first that come to mind for me. Politically, I expect the American Postal Workers' Union will put up a tremendous fight.

This is one of those things that's so stupid and useless we'd be better off paying everyone concerned—the marketers, the artists, the copywriters, the postal workers, everyone—to do nothing, since the result of their work is actually harmful. These sorts of problems are just the worst. Probably right about the postal workers' union fighting it.

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

#95

Post by AnthonyMouse »

turc1656 wrote: post #80

This really pisses me off because you don't even have an option to not do business with the DMV. Even if you don't drive (highly unlikely in FL), you still need a non-driving ID card so there's no way to avoid getting swept up into this bullshit. I see they have included an opt out link. That's nice. I wonder if they honor it. Even if they do, 99.999% of the population will never even know to do this because they've…

> Even if they do, 99.999% of the population will never even know to do this because they've probably never heard of this company (I didn't until today).

Not only that, now you know about it and you opt out, but that doesn't get your data back from every place they sold it to the week before you found out about it.

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

#96

Post by anticensor »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #11
born2discover wrote: post #5

Welcome to the United States, where your own government is making money on from your sensitive information... As a European, this bothers me on so many levels. Government should not for one, sell your personal data and furthermore should make sure if it provides access to it, that it isn't used for anything marketing like.

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

EU also has a Government DPR, very much like General DPR.

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

#97

Post by pavel_lishin »

itake wrote: post #92
dontbenebby wrote: post #81

This is pretty bad. The usual argument of " if you don't like it don't use Facebook/Google/(insert company here) " doesn't apply here. You have to interact with the government to get a DL, there are no competitors. Therefor government services should treat personal information with the utmost respect and discretion, not sell it off to the highest bidder.

In Florida, its not personal though and its not just DMVs. Basically if the government has your information, anyone can submit a FOIA request to get it. This is particularly bad with licensed professionals (Real Estate agents, hair saloon cutters, etc.) that have to have a business license to operate. You can get the contact information (email, home address, phone number) for all of these individuals b/c its required…

> In Florida, its not personal though and its not just DMVs. Basically if the government has your information, anyone can submit a FOIA request to get it. This is particularly bad with licensed professionals (Real Estate agents, hair saloon cutters, etc.) that have to have a business license to operate.

But it sounds like this case is different - the companies in question didn't submit FOIA requests, the DMV sold them for profit.

Speaking of FOIA, from further in the article:

> 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.

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

#98

Post by cgriswald »

asark wrote: post #94
cgriswald wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've neglected methods and cost of enforcement. Getting rid of the bulk rate for spam would help tremendously, but even at higher rates it's still going to be profitable for a lot of companies. Real estate, credit card, and automobile companies are the first that come to mind for me. Politically, I expect the American Postal Workers' Union will put up a tremendous fight.

This is one of those things that's so stupid and useless we'd be better off paying everyone concerned—the marketers, the artists, the copywriters, the postal workers, everyone—to do nothing, since the result of their work is actually harmful . These sorts of problems are just the worst . Probably right about the postal workers' union fighting it.

I'm wondering, in the absence of junk mail, if the post office could reduce prices on package delivery. I'm not sure where the main costs are, but if they're in the last mile... well now the post office would have trucks with a lot more space on them driving through the same routes anyway.

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

#99

Post by dahdum »

Robotbeat wrote: post #12
born2discover wrote: post #5

Welcome to the United States, where your own government is making money on from your sensitive information... As a European, this bothers me on so many levels. Government should not for one, sell your personal data and furthermore should make sure if it provides access to it, that it isn't used for anything marketing like.

The federal government in the US has pretty strict regulations with regards to PII (personally identifiable information). But apparently Florida doesn’t.

The USPS sells address updates in bulk for marketing purposes, and they are federally regulated.

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

#100

Post by gregkerzhner »

After I registered my new car in Colorado, I started getting a ton of mail from fake car warranty scams. I called them a few times to stop mailing this crap, but they just kept going anyways. It was an address I only stayed at very temporary, and the DMV was one of the only places that I gave that address, so I am pretty sure they are doing the same thing.
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