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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday November 05 2016, @09:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the license-to-snoop dept.

News from the USA's State of Washington via komonews.com!

The friendly government folks in King County, Washington, have been caught buying data on local shoppers and mining it to find the home addresses of freeloading scallywags who are likely to own a pet without also having purchased a matching permission slip.

This is one small example of how the big nose of government can end up in unpleasant, uncomfortable places when it is let off its leash. It is also an illustration of how any entity can target and locate people of specific demographics via purchase and exploitation of "private" bulk data derived from common customers' commerce.

I have a strong preference to use only cash for in-person transactions and refuse the use of so-called loyalty or discount cards, which should make such data mining much more difficult, particularly as the numbers of like-minded folks increase.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Saturday November 05 2016, @10:19PM

    by Appalbarry (66) on Saturday November 05 2016, @10:19PM (#422931) Journal

    Sloppy headline. There area whole pile of retailers and other companies operating under the name "Pet Pals."

    As far as I can tell, none of them are involved in this mess. Only Safeway and QVC were mentioned, and even those were speculation.

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  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05 2016, @10:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05 2016, @10:50PM (#422938)

    people used to make fun of me for being paranoid that this would happen. And when it happened, they didn't care anyway as long as it didn't negatively impact them.

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05 2016, @10:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05 2016, @10:52PM (#422939)

    Peevish Poster Pounces on Perceived Pitfall in Parallel Pronoucement

  • (Score: 1) by gmrath on Saturday November 05 2016, @11:51PM

    by gmrath (4181) on Saturday November 05 2016, @11:51PM (#422951)

    I'll bet this is only the tip of the iceberg. No doubt many other municipalities would be more than willing to do this if they are not already doing it. Of course, many businesses would also be more than willing to further "monetize" their horde of customer data too.

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 06 2016, @07:34AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday November 06 2016, @07:34AM (#423057) Journal

    You can't have accurateness if it would destroy a silly alliteration. Even when it is not perfect anyway.

    Or to be more in the style of the headline:

    Abolishing accuracy achieves annoying alliteration, even if it is indeed imperfect.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @05:02PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @05:02PM (#423164)

      Abolishing accuracy achieves annoying alliteration

      Obscure organizations obliterate obvious overhead announcement.

  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday November 06 2016, @04:40PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Sunday November 06 2016, @04:40PM (#423153) Homepage Journal

    Sloppy headline

    Alliteration. [wikipedia.org]

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org