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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

#41

Post by vonmoltke »

jedberg wrote: post #28
Jim- wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Most counties redact your name from their public website.

In what state? Dallas County (TX) and Broward County (FL) don't. Nor does New Jersey (we have a unified system for all 22 counties). In Dallas County I can even see the names of everyone who owned a property for the previous five years as well.

Edit: s/Not/Nor/

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

#42

Post by cascom »

sitharus wrote: post #20
kokx wrote: post #8

This seems like a hidden form of taxation. Instead of paying money, citizens pay "taxes" with their private data.

Given the prevalence of the “all taxes are bad” narrative that’s effectively cut taxes over the past couple of decades I’m not surprised. The money has to come from somewhere, so if the honest way of getting money is blocked the dishonest ones have to be used.

That pre-supposes that the problem is money - state and local revenues have been growing at 6%+ CAGR since the 1970’s, well in excess of inflation. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/state-general-rev...

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

#43

Post by SkyBelow »

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…

>>That’s because Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles said companies buying data on Floridians are not allowed to use that information for marketing.

>What did they expect it to be used for? Genealogy reports? /s

When I worked in government, the forms for FOIA requests always had a disclaimer they couldn't be used for marketing, but the laws were never enforced at all and thus widely abused. The only way to really fix this is to enforce laws, and given that currently those in power to enforce laws can selectively choose which laws to enforce, justice will never be the result.

The only fixes I can think of that aren't band-aids only covering the symptoms are drastic enough changes that I doubt those currently comfortable have the stomach for them.

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

#44

Post by windexh8er »

How does this work legally? I don't remember signing T&C when I got my licensed renewed last. I'm sure there are some legal forms I filled out but given that it's a requirement to have a state issued license to drive a motor vehicle how could this be remotely legal without an opt-out option? It seems like a monopoly if the state gets to profit from selling data without consent that a citizen is forced to use. I don't live in FL, but... Curious how this plays out now.

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

#45

Post by SkyBelow »

ehnto wrote: post #33
mackman wrote: post #14

The Massachusetts RMV does the same thing and I was unable to find a way to opt out. You can’t drive a car without giving up your personal data to be sold to anyone who pays the RMV. So much junk mail.

That's what bothers me most, it's sold for such a junk purpose. Your privacy is bartered off for cents so that a company can spam you with products you'll never buy. If we put half as much effort into bettering the world as we do building the advertising machine we would be a utopia.

Perhaps the takeaway is we do not incentivize bettering the world enough.

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

#46

Post by crankylinuxuser »

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.

Its the same with voter registrations. Anybody can request it for free. And Indiana charges 5000$ for every voter in the state.

Its also the same for property deeds. Public record. Its also the same for courts.

I find this practice to be disgusting, but there is precedent for open access to govt record.

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

#47

Post by sonthonax »

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…

Claiming it's not used for marketing is blatant newspeak. I'll try and explain what they mean. This sort of data is frequently used by trading firms to try and get a more accurate picture of how auto-companies are doing, or the local economies. Insurance firms also use this data. Experian and Equifax almost definitely use it too.

The data is terrifyingly granular, most DMVs do this. The company which I currently work for, has a database of all the currently registered cars, with their owners addresses and ages in America.

While not used in marketing that you see, it's used in aggregate market analytics.

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

#48

Post by dsfyu404ed »

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.

This is generally true about most subjects, not just PII.

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

#49

Post by ataturk »

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…

Sure, right after the people rise up and kill 50,000 statists to send a message that we're tired of their bullshit. Not holding my breath on that, though.

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

#50

Post by ataturk »

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.

Right. We live in a country with around 50 million illegal immigrants that the state government do their best to look the other way on despite the numerous crimes they commit. But I'm supposed to comply with every single law. I'm done with that. Either they make the rule of law meaningful or I simply won't bother complying, either. It's a race to the bottom and let's not pretend it isn't.
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