From the files of: "Shit Snowden/Greenwald won't ever tell you"

[Blue_Tires]

The Dark Market for Personal Data

BALTIMORE — THE reputation business is exploding. Having eroded privacy for decades, shady, poorly regulated data miners, brokers and resellers have now taken creepy classification to a whole new level. They have created lists of victims of sexual assault, and lists of people with sexually transmitted diseases. Lists of people who have Alzheimer’s, dementia and AIDS. Lists of the impotent and the depressed.

There are lists of “impulse buyers.” Lists of suckers: gullible consumers who have shown that they are susceptible to “vulnerability-based marketing.” And lists of those deemed commercially undesirable because they live in or near trailer parks or nursing homes. Not to mention lists of people who have been accused of wrongdoing, even if they were not charged or convicted.

Typically sold at a few cents per name, the lists don’t have to be particularly reliable to attract eager buyers — mostly marketers, but also, increasingly, financial institutions vetting customers to guard against fraud, and employers screening potential hires.

There are three problems with these lists. First, they are often inaccurate. For example, as The Washington Post reported, an Arkansas woman found her credit history and job prospects wrecked after she was mistakenly listed as a methamphetamine dealer. It took her years to clear her name and find a job.

Second, even when the information is accurate, many of the lists have no business being in the hands of retailers, bosses or banks. Having a medical condition, or having been a victim of a crime, is simply not relevant to most employment or credit decisions.

Third, people aren’t told they are on these lists, so they have no opportunity to correct bad information. The Arkansas woman found out about the inaccurate report only when she was denied a job. She was one of the rare ones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/opinion/the-dark-market-for-personal-data.html?_r=0

[GeorgeGist]

1. Go Giants.

[Dont call me Shirley]

2. Let's Go Royals!

[bemildred]

3. This business seems ripe for fraud, a paradise for grifters. nt

[OnyxCollie]

4. This has nothing to do with Greenwald, Snowden, or the NSA.

But your vendetta goes on, and on, and on...

[Blue_Tires]

7. And it going to keep going on, and on, and on...

I'd shown long ago that they have zero interest whatsoever in discussing corporate metadata collection

[paulkienitz]

5. yup, a trolling title for an article with no connection

[Blue_Tires]

9. See #8

and maybe you might try reading the piece first...

[rhett o rick]

6. Unrec for misleading title. nm

[Blue_Tires]

8. My title is accurate

unless Snowden and Greenwald started discussing corporate metadata collection all of a sudden...

[paulkienitz]

10. Then I could use the same title on an article about raising water buffaloes

which is also a subject on which Snowald is suspiciously silent.

[1StrongBlackMan]

11. Watching the "title" fight; I must see I agree with your opposition ...

perhaps you should change it: replacing Snowden with Assunge.

[Hestia]

12. Without them, you wouldn't even know about the metadata. He isn't the only investigative

reporter in the world, nor it seems the only whistle blower on the other side. There is plenty of work for good researchers and writers. If not, then you would accuse them of hogging all the info to themselves. [Yawn]