By now, the compilation and sale of customer information through data brokers is a well-established fact of our consumer-based society. But, recent technological developments have enabled data brokers in the data-collection industry, or Big Data, to consolidate consumer details through multiple sources in order to a more and more complete profile. Large corporations then rent these consumer profiles which include details such as hobbies, ethnicity, shopping habits, and even medical conditions in order to target specific consumers. This practice, known as data crunching or mining, allows companies to release promotions tailored toward individual interests. The deep extent of corporate data mining arose in the Wall Street Journal’s reporting the case of Mike Seay, when a piece of junk mail from OfficeMax Inc. accidentally included a private detail about the death of his daughter Ashley in a car accident approximately one year ago. In the mailing address below his name was written "Daughter Killed in Car Crash." But how did OfficeMax Inc. come into possession of such a personal tragedy? OfficeMax Inc. rented one thousand profiles for $120 from a gift retailer, Things Remembered. In a possible explanation for the link between Ashley's death and retailer Things Remembered, family and friends of the Seays had recently made a purchase of picture frames from Things Remembered to house pictures of Ashley. However, if this is how the company obtained that information, the question remains why they input it into their database and why it was included in the mailing to Mike Seay.
Courtesy of Wall Street Journal, Mike Seay.
Incidents like these reveal a major consequence of our current model of consumerism and reinforce the need to include corporate surveillance into current discussion about surveillance, its implications, and our response. Although government surveillance and public policing has long been scrutinized and criticized, corporate surveillance has been largely overlooked. The lack of the general public's knowledge and/or reaction is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of practices such as data mining. Misuse of consumer information is highly possible and consumers should be educated. As technology allows for an exponentially expanding data capacity, consumer information is being steadily and meticulously stored over time perhaps not for any immediate use, but rather in order to sell for future profit. Personal information has become a commodity, something that can be bought, sold or rented in order to channel consumer behavior. This type of behavior calls for more transparency in the methods that are used to obtain information. Maybe the biggest concern now isn't about the data mining itself, but whether or not consumer protection is even possible given the extent of corporate surveillance.
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This is an interesting post Annie. I find 'data-crunching' or 'mining' to be a quite a startling phenomena, especially the extent to which it is manifested in the Mike Seay case. Although this is a more extreme example, it reminds me of when I watch videos on youtube and advertisements of specific types of clothing pop up from websites that I have looked at before, and I subconsciously think, ‘How did the computer know I like those shoes?’. However, this class has also illuminated for me the extent to which corporate surveillance manifests itself in our consumerist society and the lack of awareness the general public has. In our technologically advanced society surveillance can occur on multiple levels, both subtle and overt. We may think we are just sitting at home looking at a computer screen, when really a larger force is tracking our behaviour with specific intentions in mind. I agree that greater awareness of this form of surveillance is needed so that people can have control over the kind of personal information that is accessible to large corporations.
ReplyDeleteThe Mike Seay case brings up the question: how much privacy are we entitled to? This week in lecture, Professor Musheno brought up the "much to do about nothing" point. In small communities there is very little privacy when you are in the public space. Aren't stores public space? When a large retail store tracks your purchases through computer systems, isn't it is similar to living in a small town and visiting the local grocery store where the same cashier always rings up your purchases? This cashier can probably draw inferences about your life based on what you're buying. Perhaps you're buying enough food for a dinner party and the cashier suggests a bottle of wine to go with it. Isn't this a form of targeted marketing? We don't generally consider that a violation of our privacy. In the Seay case, what worries me is not the fact that Things Remembered could infer from Seay's friends and family's purchases that his daughter was in a fatal car accident, but that this information could be sold and rented without his consent. Like public law enforcement, I feel that the atomization of stored data would help secure it and protect our privacy. There needs to be a conversation and perhaps regulation of the selling, renting and accumulating of stored personal information.
ReplyDeleteChia-Hui (Danielle) Sze
This article reminded me of the reading in Supervision by Gilliom, in where he refers to George Orwell's novel,1984 (1949). In 1984, people are punished because of "thought crimes". These "thought crimes" are independent thoughts or thoughts of unease, fear, anger--behaviors that are not desired by the elite are persecuted. Similarly, like George Orwell's dystopian world, the people that have to go through the security and TSA checkpoints cannot behave "out of the normal" without being discriminated against. We are not aloud to act even our most human emotions due to discrimination. Not only is this discriminatory to behavior, and to the socially constructed theory of what behavior is normally accepted in our society or not, but it is discriminatory against identities that are perceived in our country to be deemed to be dangerous due to the historical events that have occurred and have been deeply ingrained into the American Identity psyche: fear of the Mexican, the Muslim, the Soviet, the young Black male, etc.
ReplyDeleteSureyma C. Gonzalez
Very interesting post Annie! I agree with the majority of what you have written. However, I’m going to focus on three points that I felt really resonated with me from your blog post. First, I felt this post did a terrific job of highlighting a specific circumstance where personal privacy seems clearly violated. The thought that something as personal as a family death can be purchased and sold sickens and alarms the cr*p out of me.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I agree with your suggestion that regulation needs to be placed on corporate surveillance. I’d say that it is in dire need of being implemented. Situations like this should be abundantly discussed, as well as need to be prohibited from reoccurrence. Further, that fact that many citizens are ignorant to the extent that corporate surveillance penetrates into our personal lives needs to change. I would argue that through governmental discussion and response, this would be achieved through media coverage and the passing of laws.
Lastly, I appreciate your view on the consequences created by living in a society controlled by consumerism and market profitability. This article clearly expresses one horrible consequence, however I am sure that this situation occurs daily. The realization that the market appears to stand center versus our rights and security as citizens indicates a need for reform in my opinion. A quote I recorded in class suggested that we maybe viewed more as “consumers then as citizens.” This needs to change.
-Sarah Jane Hickman
It is interesting to see how different corporations such as Office Max can know so much about our own personal lives. I have had similar incidents to this one through other companies such as grocery stores and scholarship programs. For instance, I would get random emails and letters sent to my home about purchases that I have made months ago. The emails and letters would mostly contain coupons and discounts however, I would not know how these companies got my email address or my home address. I do agree with the fact that both corporate and public surveillance are being overlooked. Large corporations are digging deep into our own lives in order to "relate" to our past purchases and try make a bigger profit from us. I have also seen this when I am purchasing items online. When I am shopping for items on one day, the next day advertisements will pop up about items that I have looked over before. This relates to the book Supervision because it seems that it is almost impossible not to be surveilled when making purchases either online or in person especially when you are using a credit card. I have been told before that it is safer to use cash but as a college student how much of a convenience would carrying cash be? Consumer protection can only go so far to protect our personal information.
ReplyDeleteJordan Ho
As we are growing more aware of the flaws of corporate surveillance practices through data-mining and aggregation through such cases like the OfficeMax incident, we should realize how much of the personal data companies harvest daily is beyond our current control. In order to reap the benefits and services offered by corporations we are coerced into participating in their data-mining. I agree with the perspective that Prof Musheno holds where our society is increasing targeting and treating its citizens as consumers and taking away our power to control how we manage our own personal data. When we are targeted as consumers we passively agree to impossibly long contracts handing over our personal data. There are techniques to gain more privacy and protection against the passage of data-mining, but to the everyday internet, credit card, smart phone using citizen, it would be much easier to just click yes, I agree. And that itself is a problem when the average person can't simply subvert the system as easily it is to participate in it.
ReplyDeleteShiwei Chen
Thomas Smith
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is definitely a worrisome problem, not only because how easy it is for businesses to store and trade our personal information, but because we (the consumers) essentially have no power to counteract it. Handing over information about our lives is usually a necessary step in the process of purchasing commodities we need, giving us no choice in the matter of buying into these corporations' business of distributing information. I've had personal experience with this issue before; I have received emails from stores that I know for a fact I've never given any information to, and at the time I had no idea how or why these stores were targeting me. Since then, though, I have learned more about the exchange of personal information, so it doesn't really surprise me that corporations have been "renting" that information to one another.
This case just makes me realize on how transparent and vulnerable we are to the corporations due to our online lives. It is alarming on how others can pretty much make us become targets of market surveillance such as our very own family and friends. In example, in all my social networking sites -- I really don't share anything that I like such as music, movie, and literature tastes. However I've noticed when my friends tag me in one of their posts, the ads on facebook start to change according to what I'm tagged in. For instance a friends posts that I went to watch X movie with her, the facebook ads start to show similar ads of games and advertisement material that relate to X movie. I remember one such advertisement suggested me to like a certain product because 20 of my friends liked it on facebook. My point is that we can pretty much hide ourselves from market surveillance, but somehow (in my case my friends and in Seay's case his friends and family) we will become vulnerable to it. We cannot hide.
ReplyDeleteby: Kevin Ramirez
Chey Iwamoto
ReplyDeleteAfter hearing your presentation in section, I had a discussion with a friend about the article that you cited. Though I myself took the position that I believe most of us identify with--one of wariness at the notion of big data--my friend surprised me and took the opposite side. Personally, the idea that consumer profiles not only contain personal information, but that this personal information can be obtained in ways that we would never have thought of (e.g., connections to other consumers, as in the article) is unsettling. Yet my friend did state the important fact that in the particular case of Mike Seay and Office Max, the information that accidentally made it onto the envelope was technically public information, meaning that anyone, not just Office Max or Things Remembered, could have simply Googled Seay and found the record of the his daughter's death. And while this was a solid point, I think that the reason why this incident is particularly unsettling for most is because of the misconception that as individuals in a large mass, we are safe. It is easy to think that no one would try to investigate you if you do nothing wrong or out of the ordinary. The truth is that the technology employed by both the private and public sectors is making it increasingly effortless to keeps tabs on everyone, not just those who might be deemed of specific interest.
June Shin
ReplyDeleteWhen you presented your blog post during section, I was shocked to hear the incident of Mike Seay. However, I have to admit that I was naively more shocked to hear about the printed details of the death of Mike Seay's daughter on the envelope addressed to Mike Seay than the fact that Office Max had known about the fact of Mike Seay's daughter's death. This leads me to wonder how many people seriously wonder how much of their personal information is out in the cyber world and how severely they approach this idea. I was never concerned about my personal information being out in the public eye. I assumed that as long as my bank information, social security number, et al. was not known, there was no harm in companies "data-crunching or mining" for my information. However, this past week, I experienced the exposure of personal information that was only on Facebook and only now do I understand the severity of lack of policing in the cyber world. It is a known and unsurprising fact that companies retrieve information for the encouragement of consumerism, but it must be acknowledged that other false businesses may retrieve the same information just as easily for scamming purposes. My experience with the exposure of personal information have only just now urged me to notice the importance of policing in the cyber world.
The case of Mike Seay perfectly illustrates the vices of the boom of the internet and the trends of social media. Nothing is private anymore. We cannot expect corporations not to use our information if we so willingly input it online. Sadly, all the information that's gathered on us can be easily found on the internet today. Mike Seay may not have posted anything about his daughter's death on the internet, but a friend or family member could have quite plausibly posted something on the internet that informed Office Max of Mike's daughter's death. How can we expect corporations to honor our privacy rights if we are so eager to broadcast our activities online? In order for everyone to feel safe on the internet, there must be certain boundaries put in place. Insensitive cases like the above is the perfect example of the intrusion of the privacy of an individual. The intent of the company was to attract the customer, not to offend them by slapping a family tragedy in their faces. Perhaps cyber police should ban access to information about such personal tragedies but where can we draw the line of what information can be ethically extracted for advertising? Perhaps this occurrence serves as a broader message to the community that if citizens continue to submit information on the internet about their lives, about other people's lives, expect that information to be used by corporate advertising.
ReplyDeleteSharlene Djuhari
It is interesting to see how private corporations can and do know so much personal information. Ive had some experience with collecting customer information when I worked for bank of America. upon reviewing spending habits, tellers working on their screens can tailor types of credit cards to offer to different customers. while this may sound not so bad, tellers are able to see everything, from the places you've shopped to the places you've visited. Aside from using customer information to tailor products and services, people managing this information can use it with malicious intent. one teller ive worked with used the customers information to steal identities. in the end, I find it frightening to know that my personal information is floating about. not so much because of companies using it, more so of the person behind the screen using it to steal my identity
ReplyDeletejose e.
In agreement to Jose above me, I completely agree on how collecting customer information has become a gigantic industry standard. Last summer I worked at an angel investing company called Keiretsu Forum which funds startups who are looking for funding. I was really surprised at the amount of companies who cited "Big Data" as one of their key marketing tools. Even in a company whose main business model revolved around a delivery system for fresh groceries to local Bay Area residents, they would collect a surprising amount of information about its consumers. Indeed many questions that investors asked of these startups after their pitches were directed toward issues of security of their consumers' data. If any of these companies actually had a leak of personal information of their clients, it would effectively bury them in the ground for future rounds of funding by any investors. I found the thought quite scary as in the future I will definitely want to create my own startup and the new Internet ecosystem revolving around "the Cloud" could be a huge liability for all companies involved in data mining from the smallest startups to the Fortune 500 corporations.
DeleteMichael Wu
This blog post reminded me of what professor Musheno said in lecture last week about the expanding market power and values. The market can be more influential based on the market needs. I find it very interesting how companies are reshaping normal citizens into consumers in order to make more money for the companies. It just surprises me the extents to which companies are doing this. Companies can use information that we did not give them which makes the lines between public and private are very blurred. It is also very surprising that the companies are obtaining this information when the citizens or consumers did not even give their consent to release this information. This can be seen as very intrusive to the average citizen or consumer, depending on how sensitive they are.
ReplyDeleteChristian Monteclaro
Annie, I really enjoyed you blog piece, which highlights the questionable actions and motives of commercial mining and seizure of consumer information. One of the most intrusive forms of policing the government employs is the welfare system, as told in "Overseers of the Poor." The computer system in use by the welfare department to track welfare recipients' lives is increasingly invasive; however, in exchange welfare recipients receive a small amount of aid in return. This makes me wonder what we, the consumers, are receiving in return from these major corporation who buy access to our lives. Are we getting better deals or promotions? And is this worth the cost of being surveilled by an entity that holds no true accountability to us? Thank you for bringing this to our attention, it is important consumers question corporations' prying techniques.
ReplyDelete-Victoria Rodriguez