Do they really sell your details?

I just have a hard time accepting it...

[vincevincevince]

It's long been said that any of the following:

• Clicking an unsubscribe link
  
• Signing up for a dodgy site
  
• Not unticking the 'we may use your details for...' box
  
• Using your real name and address online
  
• etc...
  

Would result in your details being put into special lists and sold. Really?
Disclaimer: I am not planning on selling details of anyone, and wouldn't stoop so low!
It's just that I've never seen someone offering to buy this information. Not in reputable or disreputable places. I've see pretty much everything else advertised online, but not a willingness to buy personal details.

We've all seen the 100000000000 email addresses for $100 offers... but I can't believe those result from anywhere but scraping sites and newsgroups. It would be too expensive and too much effort to buy lists of personal details from anyone when you can just go out and grab them for free with a scraper.

So, can anyone shed light upon this? Does it really happen? And how do you know about it...?

[grandpa]

I once wrote code for a company that bought your details. 300 people worked all day making cold calls. The list was qualified to a degree, based in part on your spending habits, predisposition to the product and other criteria.

Those lists still exist, but the DNC regulation has really crimped the style of telemarketers. I would speculate those lists are now more costly to obtain, and there's more overhead in maintaining your lists. Telemarketers are not the only people interested in your information.

[zCat]

I signed up for the freebie magazine offered by a major software company, and I think I must have forgotten to uncheck something somewhere, and get the occasional mail to that address (I create unique addresses for stuff like that so I can see who is spamming me) and I occasionally get emails and paper-spam from their "partners".

[weeks]

If you use one of those "member" cards to get discounts at the grocery, the retailer tracks every food you purchase. They have all kinds of details on you--they know if you have a cold, what you drink (and how much, pretty much) and such.

So, who cares? What is being done with this data? Yes, it is for sale, but few are buying right now. It's just too much work to parse it down to the individual. And, marketers miss sending their message to potential buyers as well. Traditional media buying via classic demographics--age, income, where you live, gender-- works well enough for the vast majority.

My grocery sends me an email once a week, however, telling me what is on sale of things that I have bought in the past. And, I drink Diet Coke, and I've noticed that I see Diet Pepsi sales, too. (But, no, I don't switch.)

I wonder about the potential of linking up personality types via products purchased using this data. What if we determine if Apple Computer users who drive Hondas in Michigan buy their diet cola based on price in the winter? That sounds useful, but what would it cost to use?

Google has tons of data on what the masses are interested in, one would guess. Could they link search traffic to predict the stock market? Or, somthing?

In the local news biz, who is reading what is telling us a lot of what we would have been happier not knowing. We know, for example, there are many, many news stories on the web that are never, ever read by anyone. And there are many, many more that had have a very tiny audience. This is a detail that is impossible to sell to anyone, and everyone is having a hard time accepting it.

[vincevincevince]

So nobody knows of actual sales of email addresses collected through these elaborate forms? Am I right in my assumption that 99% of email addresses spammed are just scraped?

[chewy]

I have one case. I purchased some obscure software on line years ago using a credit card.

I always try to create a [e-mail] type email address when buying on line and did so in this case.

Recently I began getting emails addressed to [e-mail] literally coming from <snip> bank.

And <the bank> was emailing me about my <bank> account.

The machine that was running the obscuresoftware was a 486 which gives you some sense of the time involved.

How would a fortune 500 bank get that email address if I only gave it to obscuresofware company? Further, how did they know to match it to my actual account?

1 case doesn't indicate anything.

Back in the day when I purchased the software, it may well have been using a card from a bank that was purchased by <the bank> - but I am confident that I never gave that unique email address to <the bank> or any other CC company.

[edited by: lawman at 1:24 pm (utc) on Feb. 15, 2007]

[Visit Thailand]

chewy are you sure the banks emails were not phishing emails. I get loads of different bank emails each day non are genuine. I refuse to use internet banking, even phone banking is a big no.

[chewy]

this was a 100% vaild email from <the bank>. No doubt about it. They had the account number correct. All checked out.

Logged right into the account with https.

normally I don't look at these other than to observe that they are phish. Commonly those appear to be from <another bank>.

this was the real thing - or these phisher guys are really good.

[edited by: lawman at 1:25 pm (utc) on Feb. 15, 2007]

[LifeinAsia]

It's long been said that any of the following:

Clicking an unsubscribe link

Would result in your details being put into special lists and sold. Really?

If you're getting SPAM, you're already on lists. By clicking on the link, you just identified your e-mail address as a valid address. Confirmed e-mail addresses are MUCH more valuable than unconfirmed ones. So yes, you most likely will be added to a special list. (Unless, of course, it was a legit mailing list that you actually did subscribe to in the first place.)