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I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

nytimes.com

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Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#151

Post by ChaosDegenerate »

mr__y wrote: post #73
ChaosDegenerate wrote: post #28

Will these systems be prone to false data? I.e. if an organization fighting for free speech would create software generating false personas who create false messages, and other events, would they know any better? For example, it wouldn't be too hard to generate hundreds if not thousands of fake Facebook, Instragram, Airbnb, Coinbase, Uber, Gmail, Amazon, etc. accounts doing "stupid things". Like ordering stuff and ca…

If all this data would be more or less random (which is kind of implied by "run on bots worldwide in millions") this would merely add some random noise to large datasets. For this to create any real problems the noise generated by those bots would have to be somehow biased, of course in an incorrect way. This implies then, that for such idea to be even remotely effective one would need at least a peak in aggregated d…

Thank you for your reply. Granted that Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and all the others collect data on us. And this is used by the Government security agencies (i.e. NSA/CIA as described by Snowden) to spy on us -- as we all know now the agencies have backdoors to these Corporations enabled with stuff like 'secret rooms' (AT&T) common. In which case this is used to detect terrorism threats. Why state-operators with enormous funding, like let's say Iran or North Korea or Russia or China -- won't generate systems like this to make NSA/CIA job harder (if anything). If I were Iran state security institution planning, targeting and executing terrorist attacks against the US and their allies -- I would be very interested to do things like millions of email accounts sending millions of emails daily with trigger words like 'bomb', 'attack', 'death to america', etc, etc. So my real communication would be a drop in the ocean of similar-looking noise.

What is stopping these actors from doing just that?

I have wondered about this for long time and I'm just curious. If the whole 'terrorism threat' thing is real, we would see counter-actions like this done by terrorism sponsoring organizations or states. No?

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#152

Post by astura »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #137
astura wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already a big (and largely unaddressed) problem with the big 3 credit CRAs, if you know enough about a person you can very easily request their credit report and get the keys to the kingdom (so-to-speak) - everything you didn't already know. I mean, I already request credit reports for my husband without issue, for example (with his permission! - he finds it much easier to just ask me to do those things for h…

> since email address is part of the report I don't have a business relationship with any CRA. If they have my e-mail it isn't because I gave it to them intentionally. Nor is it guaranteed that they have a valid email that I still control.

I meant the Sift reports, not the big three CRAs. The Sift reports will contain your email address since it's reporting mostly on online services (that require an email address to use)

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#153

Post by 0xffff2 »

Cieplak wrote: post #39
uptown wrote: post #35

For all of these linkages there needs to be a key that associates data from disparate services together. So what’s the key? Email address? IP addresses? Credit cards? Is it implausible to try to take steps to circumvent these firms’ abilities to connect our dots?

Quite possibly a composite key comprising name, gender, age and locale. "87% of the U.S. population is uniquely identified by date of birth, gender, postal code." [0] [0] https://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/paper1.p...

I would expect it's more complicated than that. I doubt that they just start over every time you move to a different city.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#154

Post by dennisgorelik »

progval wrote: post #92
ENOTTY wrote: post #72

The fact that the data is being sold to third-parties (e.g., Sift) by their collectors (e.g., Airbnb) is troubling. But what is even more troubling is that we don't know how scoring companies (e.g., Sift) are using the data and how they are generating scores. Their models, if they are using ML, are opaque. Journalists haven't yet cracked this nut, instead just reporting on the fact that company A has bought personal…

> The fact that the data is being sold to third-parties (e.g., Sift) by their collectors (e.g., Airbnb) is troubling. It looks like Airbnb & co paid Sift instead, in addition to sending it their data: "Sift has this data because the company has been hired by Airbnb, Yelp, and Coinbase"

My guess is that Airbnb will stop using Sift after this article is published, because of bad press Sift generated for Airbnb by giving Airbnb messages back to the original user (the author of that article).

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#155

Post by astura »

SamBam wrote: post #146
astura wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want life insurance then you are required to give permission to view this data about you. If you don't want to give permission, then you don't get life insurance. https://www.rxhistories.com/irix/medical-data/ >How It Works >1 Applicants sign a HIPAA-compliant authorization, enabling insurers to retrieve their medical information >2 Insurers electronically query Milliman IntelliScript in real-time >3 Milliman…

But I never gave Milliman permission to hold this data, so didn't they already violate HIPAA?

Sounds like they have hooks into the back end systems to query multiple insurance companies and pharmacies on the fly. - "Milliman instantly gathers information from multiple data sources"

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#156

Post by dkonofalski »

Frost1x wrote: post #96
Cieplak wrote: post #26

I’m curious what sort of due diligence these companies must do to authenticate you as a person prior to satisfying an information retrieval request. Given that the exchange is entirely digital, it seems plausible that there are bad actors who would pose as someone else to gain access to their personal information. What sort of liability does one of these data controllers bear when they fail to properly authenticate a…

I suspect we as a society need new legislation to deal with these sort of issues. Before, much of this was incredibly difficult to impossible so legislation and regulation was entirely avoidable and relatively rare occurence could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. At this point, technology has enabled this sort of behavior at mass scale, now revealing far more personal and useful information about individuals. A…

>will our representatives actually give teeth to real data protection legislation

No. The majority of them don't even understand what data is being collected, how it can be used, or the technology behind any of it. Until the people in office change, the idea that our representatives can or will protect us is toothless and spineless.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#158

Post by lisper »

I just tried requesting my information from one of the links provided in the article. As part of the process I had to upload an image of my government-issued ID. After that, I was told to expect an email confirmation link that I would have to click on before they could proceed. That was an hour ago and the email has not yet arrived.

I don't really have any reason to suspect that this is a scam, but I can't help but notice that if one were to set up a phishing site for government IDs the UX would likely be indistinguishable from what actually happened here.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#159

Post by hirundo »

amelius wrote: post #140
Frost1x wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect we as a society need new legislation to deal with these sort of issues. Before, much of this was incredibly difficult to impossible so legislation and regulation was entirely avoidable and relatively rare occurence could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. At this point, technology has enabled this sort of behavior at mass scale, now revealing far more personal and useful information about individuals. A…

> I suspect we as a society need new legislation to deal with these sort of issues. Why not ban targeted advertising altogether?

Because it has value, both to the advertiser and to the target, compared to un-targeted advertising. Advertising is an attempt to transfer information. Targeted ads means that the information is more likely to be relevant, whatever its other downsides. Let's not throw out that baby with the bath water.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#160

Post by prats226 »

lisper wrote: post #158

I just tried requesting my information from one of the links provided in the article. As part of the process I had to upload an image of my government-issued ID. After that, I was told to expect an email confirmation link that I would have to click on before they could proceed. That was an hour ago and the email has not yet arrived. I don't really have any reason to suspect that this is a scam, but I can't help but n…

To get this personal information, asking for government-issued ID gives them one more data point on you and reinforcement of identity. So a win for them as well I guess?
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