Another wonderful article from Clark Howard that applies to everything:
See what marketers know about you
By Clark Howard
Marketing
organizations that have been super secretive are now facing scrutiny in
the aftermath of continuing revelations about government spying.
One called
Acxiom that I've talked about in the past
reportedly has massive documentation on who you are, what activities you like, what cars you own, what your mortgage is, what kind of ailments you have, etc.
This
data can be continually crunched and packaged for sale thanks to the
miracle of parallel computing technology. But now for the first time,
you can get a peek at what's in your Acxiom file.
Just go to
AboutTheData.com
and you can answer a series of questions to fully verify that you are
who you say you are. Then you can see the info they have on you that
they believe is fact -- but may actually be fiction.
Out of a
sample group of 4 people on my show staff, two were able to see their
records and two weren't. The two of us who couldn't probably couldn't
because we've
frozen our credit.
My executive producer Christa was able to see her file. It contained
incorrect info including the wrong age of her kids, the wrong number of
children, and the wrong income. My associate producer Joel's file was
even more radically wrong. It listed him as a blue collar craftsman who
completed high school, but had no college education. Joel is, in fact, a
graduate of Kennesaw State University and not a craftsman -- unless you count drinking craft beer as a qualifier!
So these data brokers are out marketing what they claim is a precisely
fine-tuned dossier they have on you. And in many cases it's kerflooey!
"All the inaccurate data, all the time." How's that for an advertising
slogan, Acxiom?!
Fortunately, you have the option to go to AboutTheData.com and
opt out so they can stop compiling data on you!
One
caveat, though: There's been a lot of widespread suspicion that the opt
out form may be a backdoor kind of way for Acxiom to collect further
data on you. The company denies it, but that hasn't quelled the
skeptics. Use your own best discretion before taking the leap.
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Quote worth repeating again:
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know that just ain't so." Mark Twain
Professional, "highly trained" (whatever that means) Stock analysts are a great example, especially when they appear on CNBC or Bloomberg TV :-))
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