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Welcome to the goldfish bowl ...

The LEAST sinister development of this is commercial in nature. Data mining like this can be used for exploitative advertising (like marketing sham credit repair services) and discriminatory pricing (raising prices to those people who are "locked in" to a particular situation, or who are better off financially).

The MOST horrendous use of this information would be by criminals who use it to prey on the elderly, people under great stress, and of course, youth. While there are laws regulating how information is collected about children, they are WIDELY IGNORED, or glossed over by meaningless legalese (just like everybody's favorite, the EULA).

In a counseling class a few years ago, we were taught to look for signs of "troubled" teens: teens who has suffered a loss of parent, divorce, move to another city or school, who used anti-depressants, who had other signs of low esteem. These teens are especially vulnerable to predators who have detailed profiles and know what buttons to push. Now we have a commercial service who can provide that information with a flick of the wrist. How wonderful.

For parents, this is a nightmare waiting to happen. About the best thing I could recommend to any parent is to run a search on themselves AND their kids, just to see what's being exposed. Forewarned is forearmed ....

Posted by: terry flores   Posted on: 09/02/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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