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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

#331

Post by neodymiumphish »

vertex-four wrote: post #301
neodymiumphish wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This, like TV, doesn't require tracking of individual people who haven't consented to such. That's a stretch. How do you think they determine any information about the "known" audience? Obviously, they do all sorts of research to determine more about the audiences watching certain shows and channels, likely by sifting through social media, show reviews (IMDB, etc), and elsewhere to determine who's watching what sho…

The difference is that if I don’t want to let anyone know that I watch My Little Pony... I don’t have to! There’s no little black box connected to my TV that tells an advertiser that I’m watching it without asking me. I can also have a discussion with my friends about My Little Pony and how amazing the last episode was without an algorithm picking that up, unless I publish it to the world or explicitly send it to the…

I understand your point, and I agree that it's easier to keep your television viewing habits hidden from your internet viewing habits, for obvious reasons, but I'm just pointing out that there are still ways to aggregate data to the point where they are able to determine, with significant accuracy, which ads are the most effective based on demographics, locality, cross-referencing social media, web traffic, consumer surveys, department store sales information, and probably tons of other details.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#332

Post by Ambele »

llamataboot wrote: post #179
brianpgordon wrote: post #145

> When I told Mr. Tan that I was alarmed to see my Airbnb messages and Yelp orders in the hands of a company I’d never heard of before, he responded by saying that Sift doesn’t sell or share any of the data it has with third parties. What a line to say with a straight face. They are the third party that he's uncomfortable sharing his data with!

With what we know about the likelihood of major data breaches, even if you liked Sift, and thought their purposes were noble, you would have to admit that they are one big sitting duck for a targeted hack that could provide you with massive amounts of aggregated information on an individual.

Could Sift be the next Equifax?

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#333

Post by Ambele »

fooqux wrote: post #136

All this makes me wonder: How long until being a privacy-minded individual screws you over in the same way that paying cash for everything screws over your credit rating? I shouldn't have to choose between privacy and being able to return a device at Best Buy.

If you don't have a credit score or a credit score of 0 due to a thin file, you can get one by using a cash-secured loan of $500. The loan amount doesn't really matter so you can pick the smallest loan they offer. Then you're basically buying yourself a credit score for $50 or less. Don't use online lenders because the one I used (selflender.com, name & shame) kept my $500 principal despite claiming over and over that they sent a check that never arrives. If you do this, use a CU or bank branch instead so that after you pay it off, you can stare them in their money-loving bankster eyes to politely demand your $500 back.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#334

Post by crooked-v »

cgag wrote: post #213
crooked-v wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not an interpretation of that phrase at all.

It makes me think of signing inescapable contracts with demons, which seem convenient but ultimately doom you for eternity.

Nothing about 'regulations are written in blood' is about convenience. Regulations specifically exist to make things less convenient. The reason such regulations exist is because people did the convenient thing and it killed somebody.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#335

Post by efreak »

yoaviram wrote: post #80
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…

I created a free service which makes it easier to get Sift (and others) to delete your data: https://opt-out.eu/?company=sift.com . It automates the process of sending GDPR erasure requests. I sent my request this morning. Support for GDPR SAR requests (get a copy of your data) is coming soon.

Your website styles are off slightly, such that when I zoom in, then zoom back out, there's white margin at the left, next to any colored backgrounds. Also, on too small a screen, the browser extension text goes off both sides, rather than reflowing and fitting the screen size...

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#337

Post by jlokier »

therealx wrote: post #231
jlokier wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit reference agencies are already prone to false data, and that's without anyone trying to game them. When I checked this year, 2 out of the 3 major CRAs in my country (Equifax, Experian) had: - An incorrect flag saying I was not registered to vote, and a note saying this significantly affected my credit rating. - A bogus address that didn't correspond to any physical location. Nor did it correspond with any addr…

So common. Ive had all of these happen, too. I didn't know not being registered to vote could hurt you, was that in the US? I assume not due to BT being mentioned. AT&T is currently doing the same thing BT did to you. I closed my account and shipped back hardware a year ago. Since then, they have been reporting either a bill with a random number from $100-3,000 or 0, and being either on time or late or none. It's mad…

In the UK. I don't know how much not being registered to vote hurts, only that CRA pretty websites highlight it as a significant negative, and advised me to register. Which I already had, years prior, they just got it wrong until I complained. Which took 10 minutes with Experian and several weeks with Equifax.

I'll described what I had to do to fix the BT nonsense, in case it's useful for your AT&T problem.

To fix the BT nonsense (after I'd done tedious detective work to figure out which company it was, as it was under a company name I didn't recognise), I was lucky to get a good BT customer service agent, who explained that they could see it was BT, that it happened to other people as well, and the BT Equifax-handling department would fix it as soon as they looked at it, but that department wouldn't fix it on my request. To fix it I needed to complain to Equifax myself as a data correction. Equifax could not change data, since it merely aggregates data supplied by other companies and is not responsible for the data, but it would contact the BT Equifax-handling department, who would make the correction and submit it back to Equifax. In the end getting Equifax to process a data correction complaint was excessively difficult, slow and intrusive (requiring various documents I didn't care to send them), and I found a third company who magically made Equifax process the complaint in days rather than months; it went all the way along the chain to BT and back, and was magically fixed.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#338

Post by cgag »

crooked-v wrote: post #334
cgag wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me think of signing inescapable contracts with demons, which seem convenient but ultimately doom you for eternity.

Nothing about 'regulations are written in blood' is about convenience. Regulations specifically exist to make things less convenient. The reason such regulations exist is because people did the convenient thing and it killed somebody .

they are convenient solutions

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#339

Post by randymedes8 »

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Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#340

Post by randymedes8 »

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