- Nov 26, 2011
- 123,644
- 57,012
- 2,290
Many years ago, when my wife and I were first dating, her mother died and she inherited her mother's house.
Not long after, she adopted a black Labrador retriever mix from the local dog pound.
A few years later, we married and moved to another state.
A week after our arrival in our new home, we received some mail addressed to her deceased mother from a veterinarian just a few blocks from our new house! The vet mentioned our dog by name and asked to be our new vet.
You can imagine our shock at receiving mail addressed to my wife's dead mom addressed to our new house.
So I called this vet and told them they had freaked out my wife. Because of this, they readily coughed up the name of the company from which they had received our data.
Epsilon.
I then called Epsilon and asked WTF. They informed me that when you fill out a change of address form at the UNITED STATES POST OFFICE, the USPS sells your name to data collection agencies. And small businesses like our old vet are in that network and provide the names and personal data about their clients, and in turn they receive similar information when a potential new client moves to town.
And this is still going on.
So...yeah. All this faux outrage over Cambridge Analytica and Facebook is hypocritical bullslhit.
Remember how the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SELLS YOUR PERSONAL DATA TO CORPORATIONS FOR PROFIT the next time you see some Congressman putting on theater for the rubes over Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.
And now for the prediction portion of our program: If and when Congress writes legislation to prevent these breaches of privacy by online companies, you can be sure they will word that legislation very carefully so as to exclude the decades long practice of violating your privacy through our mail system.
Not long after, she adopted a black Labrador retriever mix from the local dog pound.
A few years later, we married and moved to another state.
A week after our arrival in our new home, we received some mail addressed to her deceased mother from a veterinarian just a few blocks from our new house! The vet mentioned our dog by name and asked to be our new vet.
You can imagine our shock at receiving mail addressed to my wife's dead mom addressed to our new house.
So I called this vet and told them they had freaked out my wife. Because of this, they readily coughed up the name of the company from which they had received our data.
Epsilon.
I then called Epsilon and asked WTF. They informed me that when you fill out a change of address form at the UNITED STATES POST OFFICE, the USPS sells your name to data collection agencies. And small businesses like our old vet are in that network and provide the names and personal data about their clients, and in turn they receive similar information when a potential new client moves to town.
And this is still going on.
So...yeah. All this faux outrage over Cambridge Analytica and Facebook is hypocritical bullslhit.
Remember how the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SELLS YOUR PERSONAL DATA TO CORPORATIONS FOR PROFIT the next time you see some Congressman putting on theater for the rubes over Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.
And now for the prediction portion of our program: If and when Congress writes legislation to prevent these breaches of privacy by online companies, you can be sure they will word that legislation very carefully so as to exclude the decades long practice of violating your privacy through our mail system.
