Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

abcactionnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 151 posts

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

#131

Post by opportune »

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…

Can you not hire some legal services business to hold the title of your business in some kind of trust? Kind of like what you can do for domain names to obfuscate the true owner

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

#132

Post by jrs235 »

civilian wrote: post #128
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ostensibly about making sure you don't spread disease. Edit: changed mostly to ostensibly, because of comments below.

It's not. In many states it's a 6-month program. A "don't spread disease" course could be done in 8 hours. It's about making it harder for people to compete with the existing hair dressers. It's about forcing students into schools. It's about extracting rent from the economy. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cosmetology-rules-show-ab_b_5... https://reason.com/2016/08/03/do-you-have-a-license-to-braid...

Funny how the chair of the county GOP where I currently live belongs to a party, the GOP, that screams about too many regulations and government shouldn't be picking winners and losers yet he and his wife own and operate a salon school, which in our state is required to cut hair and consists of hundreds of hours to "graduate". The hypocrisy is sickening...

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

#133

Post by dredmorbius »

ehnto wrote: post #34
jedberg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are also call center programs that call specifically to fill in those details. You answer, they ask who they are speaking to, then click, they're gone.

Source?

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

#134

Post by pavel_lishin »

jonwachob91 wrote: post #125
pavel_lishin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 the…

>>> But it sounds like this case is different - the companies in question didn't submit FOIA requests, the DMV sold them for profit. The way I interpreted it (and from prior experience with FOIA requests), a government agency can charge you a fee for processing a FOIA request. So the $77MM that the FL DMV made from "sales" of personal information, I interpret as FOIA fees collected for processing FOIA requests. I cou…

I thought that could be true as well, but this line from the article makes me think otherwise:

> One of the data brokers accessing Florida DMV information is Arkansas-based marketing firm Acxiom, which has an agreement with the state to buy driver and ID cardholder data for a penny a record.

Maybe that's just some sort of agreement to automate the FOIA process, but it does imply at least a qualitative difference from the kinds of access you and I get vs. the kind of access that Acxiom gets.

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

#135

Post by civilian »

jrs235 wrote: post #132
civilian wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. In many states it's a 6-month program. A "don't spread disease" course could be done in 8 hours. It's about making it harder for people to compete with the existing hair dressers. It's about forcing students into schools. It's about extracting rent from the economy. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cosmetology-rules-show-ab_b_5... https://reason.com/2016/08/03/do-you-have-a-license-to-braid...

Funny how the chair of the county GOP where I currently live belongs to a party, the GOP, that screams about too many regulations and government shouldn't be picking winners and losers yet he and his wife own and operate a salon school, which in our state is required to cut hair and consists of hundreds of hours to "graduate". The hypocrisy is sickening...

IDK, If he's voicing his support for licensing, or not doing anything about licenses, then yeah it's hypocrisy. But there are a _lot_ of regulations to take down, and this simply might not be high on his priority list. Should his wife be doing black-market hair styling?

Just because someone is compelled into an arrangement they speak against doesn't mean it's hypocrisy.

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

#136

Post by qubitcoder »

chrisseaton wrote: post #119
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much all states require a hairdresser's license.

How does the government determine whether something creative like hair dressing is at a good enough standard?

Consider the harsh chemicals involved in hair coloring and other such treatments. Not only do you have the risk of spreading disease to consider, but you must also be mindful of _serious_ chemical burns. It's anything but trivial.

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

#137

Post by erobbins »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #16
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…

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

I worked for a company that had Florida (and other state) DMV data and that's exactly what we did.

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

#138

Post by nojvek »

slics wrote: post #10

And one wonders of why identify theft happens. OPM, Health Insurance, IRS, Credit Card companies, different websites you purchase from, have lost our information. Then they give you 1 year of free monitoring like that f.... matters. But to see a government owned agency to sale your personal information is beyond sick. I hope that one day we get to really be the sole owner of our own PII. Maybe it’s a dream, maybe I a…

What we really need is steep fines for losing PII.

With the current government that won’t happen but here’s to hope that in 2020 we get a sane government

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

#139

Post by sneak »

dontbenebby wrote: post #83
sneak wrote: post #32

I’m not sure about Florida, but many states also make it illegal to not put your actual, honest, this-is-where-I-sleep-every-night residence address on your DL/ID card, too, making this doubly bad, as they then publicize data that is directly relevant to the physical safety of yourself and your family. Avoiding it is illegal.

And even if they don't voter registration almost always requires a real physical address, and is often a public record. So victims of domestic violence, stalking etc are incentivized not to register to vote.

There is a program in some states that allows you a confidential state-run mail forwarding address for this purpose. You can then use it at the DMV and your state-run forwarding address gets leaked via public records.

Unfortunately, it requires that one ask permission to use the program and justify their request for privacy; apparently those that don’t have permanent documentation of their death threats are less entitled to privacy and safety.

The state as fail-deadly arbiter of privacy is an entirely abhorrent situation.

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

#140

Post by jrs235 »

civilian wrote: post #135
jrs235 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how the chair of the county GOP where I currently live belongs to a party, the GOP, that screams about too many regulations and government shouldn't be picking winners and losers yet he and his wife own and operate a salon school, which in our state is required to cut hair and consists of hundreds of hours to "graduate". The hypocrisy is sickening...

IDK, If he's voicing his support for licensing, or not doing anything about licenses, then yeah it's hypocrisy. But there are a _lot_ of regulations to take down, and this simply might not be high on his priority list. Should his wife be doing black-market hair styling? Just because someone is compelled into an arrangement they speak against doesn't mean it's hypocrisy.

His wife isn't cutting hair, she's selling required snake oil "education" and debt to others. They say one thing, regulations are bad, but profit off of them. They don't need to be in the business... But it's profitable. They haven't and don't fight the regulation that profits them. They are modern day Pharisees.
Post reply on HN