The Junk Mail Men: Selling Your Data for over a Century (2019)

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/12/the-junk-mail-men-selling-your-data-for-a-century/

by animalcule • 6 years ago

109 7 6 years ago

dmckeon• 6 years ago

Never thought I would feel nostalgic for old school address labels. The current version of marketing is much more, ah, specific. If you work with data about people, you should read Christopher Wylie's description of more powerful technology:

https://www.amazon.com/Mindf-Cambridge-Analytica-Break-Ameri...

kevin_thibedeau• 6 years ago

The "old school" data brokers were keeping track of menstrual cycles 20 years ago for timed targeted ads. They were very specific about many things. The new kids Google and Facebook didn't invent this game.

noman-land• 6 years ago

Mind posting some links about this? I'd be very interested in reading about it.

jimmaswell2• 6 years ago

The internship I was assigned in college was a local junkmail mill. I was supposed to sign an NDA at some point but never did. Apparently they were able to use FOIA requests targeted at localities to get a lot of information for mail campaign targeting that all got put in a big database. Seemed a little sketchy.

techntoke• 6 years ago

No need to do that when the USPS will sell it to them.

jimmaswell2• 6 years ago

I think the FOIA's gots extra info like who got a permit to build a pool.

The Junk Mail Men: Selling Your Data for over a Century (2019)

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