Okay, in my opinion up until this chapter Garfinkel has been on a role talking about how people can steal information, different types of information and future scenarios of what can be done with peoples information.
This chapter was a snoozefest I had to push my way through it. That's why this post will be somewhat shorter.
He makes and reiterates one important point that companies don't really have "you information" when it comes to marketing. They have information about you. I don't really own the fact that I am a 22 year old male who likes to play guitar, that's just information about me. And truly I agree with this position even though it stinks and in fact I've supported this notion in some database work I've done.
About a year ago I decided to help out my old campus ministry by updating their database they used to track students, alumni, and donors. (It turned into a big project, now I've been helping out other campus ministries across the Eastern Coast) But anyways, It tracks pledges and fullfilments, tax reporting, which students belong to which parents and donors (and what type of relationship) it also tracks what types of appeals they have given to. Needless to say this has increased the amount of money they collect on a year to year basis.
While we designed it though, all in Microsoft Access, we came across one crucial question. How Long would we keep information for? We went back and forth talking about archiving after 5-7 years or removing people from the call lists after a period of time. And we finally said forget it lets just keep all of it and organize it by date. The idea was that we collected all this information might as well keep it and put it to good use and if need be to clean up the database we'll worry about that every 5 years or so.
I think companies have the same approach if we go through the trouble of collecting others informations we're going to keep it for as long as we can. Hence why so many people still get mail not addressed to them where others have lived before them.
Anyways turned out not to be a short post at all. To wrap up, GO NOLES BEAT GATORS.
2 comments:
Yes, companies have information about you that you have provided them with, and they can use this information in various ways within their company. However, the question remains do they have an obligation to keep this information in house, or should they share and sell it to other companies without your consent? I don't believe that my name and address should be shared without my consent in the same way that I don't expect a company to share my credit card number. Who decides what information can be shared and what can't? I should be the one to decide, not them.
As far as the do not call lists, they do very little to keep your information private. There is not enough legislation to ensure compliance with the lists, and many companies ignore them.
I agree with Alan. I really don't want people providing let alone making money off of my information. But I guess it has probably already been done...c'est la vie. I really don't have time to write my congressman about this one!
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