Daily Archives: Friday, December 14, 2007

Long ago you used to be able to enter contests merely by filling in your name on a cereal box-top and mailing it away. You still can to some extent. Doing so allowed companies to collect legitimate names and addresses from which they derived mailing lists for further marketing ventures. Nothing has changed today except that marketing is much more powerful in that they are extremely adept at collecting your private information without making it seem that you are telling them a lot of stuff you should not. One of the scams today is packaged with legitimate efforts to improve services. I will not name any companies doing this, but you can see what I call data mining in many places. All of these are disguised as being something beneficial to you, the consumer. There are opinion surveys, contests, insurance quotes, etc. To enter the contest, claim a prize, or … Continue reading →