How Your Name Ends Up On A List
Do you know how you end up on direct mail lists that you never signed up for? I always thought it was a byproduct of the magazines I subscribed to; as it turns out, that’s still very much the case but there are new ways that large corporations are following your usage and selling your behavior patterns. It’s a strange, subtle network of data collection where you, legally, actually don’t have an expectation of privacy.
Last week I met with a guy who is a VP at one of the largest advertising agencies in America. The shop’s largest client is a major Asian automaker and one of the largest corporations in the world. We were discussing the lack of privacy online and offline these days and he brought up an interesting story:
(paraphrased as I wasn’t taking notes)
“Do you know how (redacted company name) recently inbounded a bunch of customers to its prospect list?
“No, how?
“Toyota / Lexus / Scion is one of our main competitors and recently they held a big drive event. People came out to a big state fair area and drove some new cars they had. Well, this independent company drove around the parking lot, photographing each license plate. They cross-referenced the numbers, put together a long list of names and addresses and then sold that list to us for (client name redacted).”
“Gosh, that’s frightening.”
I followed up the meeting with a phone call to my friend who works in the food industry. He hadn’t heard of companies collecting usage data from events. Instead, he told me something even more shocking: there are companies that do this at certain times of the day as research for some of their clients. For example, a Starbucks parking lot between 7-9 am might be prime research to sell to Folgers while the cars outside of a nightclub are ripe for companies seeking to reach consumers of cologne, hair products, et cetera.
There doesn’t seem to be any way to combat this, although a law enforcement contact I have stated that if you’re on private property and not moving, your car technically doesn’t need a license plate. Whoever sells that license plate cover might create a business out of the fear of this loss of privacy alone.
(Creative Commons photo by Zach K)
