Debt Consolidation Articles

Do you ever wonder where all the junk mail in your mailbox comes from? What makes an advertiser so sure you'll be interested in lingerie or a new fishing rod? Are they just taking a stab in the dark?

Information has become the hottest commodity of the nineties. The tremendous increase in the data processing power of computers has led to the creation of "super databases," which contain vast amounts of personal information. Advances in programming have allowed the information industry to manipulate data for almost any purpose. For example, if a large department store is interested in attracting female customers aged twenty-five to forty with incomes of $40,000 or more who hold executive positions at large companies and have credit lines in excess. of $10,000, it could easily purchase a list You might think you could never appear on any kind of list, but your mailbox says otherwise. Even the most seemingly trivial action can put your name into a database and your personal information on the auction block to be sold to the highest bidder. Information can come from the most unlikely places.

In an age of lower profits and even lower budgets, retail marketers of all types have found it is no longer profitable to employ a "shotgun" approach to marketing. For many years marketers relied on massive mailings and media advertising to drum up business. This approach, though very expensive, was effective, since neither the airwaves nor the postal system was yet filled with clutter. As markets became more competitive, postage and airtime more expensive, advertisers began to find their marketing campaigns growing simultaneously less effective and more expensive. Retailers discovered that in order to stretch their advertising dollars they would need to employ a strategy of "target marketing," advertising only to groups they perceived as having the greatest likelihood of using their product. First a marketer would do a survey of its existing clients to find out who bought the most and try to determine those people's common characteristics. Perhaps they all had middle incomes, or a certain kind of job, or resided in certain kinds of neighborhoods. Then the marketer would go about locating more people with the same characteristics in the hope of selling more of their product. They could begin by looking in their own credit customer databases, but this source would run dry very quickly, and besides, these people would already be customers. Where could they find more patrons?

A good list broker can get a roster of people with practically any set of characteristics you could imagine. Rich people, poor people, blue collar, white collar, homeowner, business owner, and any other specification you wish to name. Many of the credit bureaus sell or supply list brokers with information. These lists can be based on credit reputation, income, type of job, or any other criteria the credit bureau may have. Information can also be obtained from a variety of other sources. For instance:

• Information on the kind of car you drive and where you live is available at many state motor vehicle departments. A list can be purchased, for example, naming all the owners of Jaguars in a specific county. Computerized databases, quickly becoming available, mean instantaneous access, allowing someone to input a name or a street and obtain all the cars a person owns or all the cars in a particular neighborhood.
• The Post Office's change of address form not only goes directly to credit bureaus but is also available to anyone who asks. The current residence of any P.O. Box holder is also available.
• CompuServe, a computer database service, offers a service called Phone File, which contains the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of millions of Americans across the country. A name can be obtained simply by entering a telephone number; enter a person's name and state and a telephone number will be given.
• •The next time you use a discount coupon at a grocery store, your name and address could be going into a database. Many of the coupons sent through the mail are encoded with your personal information. When the coupon is redeemed through an electronic scanner at your supermarket, the information may be placed in a database.
• •If you make a purchase through the mail, subscribe to a magazine, or return a warranty card, the personal information you include is probably being sold to other marketers and information bureaus.
• •When you dial a toll-free 800 number, your name and address may be retrieved and the information you provide sold or added to a database.
• •When you check into a hotel and fill out a registration form, the information you provide is likely to be used again.
• •United States government agencies share information with most other agencies, including the IRS. Although most of this information is not available to private industry, government agencies do add to their files information obtained from private sources.

The list goes on. Although all of us enjoy the benefits of a computerized society, few realize the tremendous amount of information about our personal lives stored in private databases. Perhaps the most private and the most difficult to avoid having are the credit files and personal lies held by the credit bureaus. These, next to government information, auks, contain the most sensitive information about most of us.