Question is pretty much the title. How do these background search sites find this information they use and post it to their sites?
When I checked my name on Mylife.com it says “Environmental Supporter” and “Second Amendment Supporter”. Both of which are correct, but how in the hell do they know that? I never filled out anything with that kind of information. Is this through digital data collection or are these sites paying for some other means to get this info? Thanks!
Are you on any social media? And if so, do you talk about the environment or the second amendment on there? Have you ever signed an online petition? Have you Googled these topics while logged in to Gmail? Are you a member of Greenpeace or the NRA? Those are some pretty straightforward ways, off the top of my head, that that sort of data could be collected about you.
An online service is almost certainly making use of digital data collection in one form or another. Here’s a nifty little graph showing a bunch of other possible information sources, and what they’re worth to marketers.
I use an email client for gmail, not a member of any organizations and I am not on social media. I have used ghostery and ublock for a long time, so most of the trackers are out…thats why I am confused how they know lol. Thank you for the link, definitely interesting!
This website is social media. Just not the latest, most stylish flavor of social media.
You are unaware of your digital data trail as per the infographic link. That is the only logical answer.
Have you voted on issues related to the second amendment and the environment?
But how would such a site associate his postings here with his identity - I assume anomalous1 is not his real name, and I assume his email address (or other identifying data) is not made public by this site? (or any such website)
They may be drawing conclusions based on websites you visit. So a “Second Amendment Supporter” may be more likely to be found visiting the website of Guns & Ammo magazine than, say, Mother Jones magazine.
FWIW, I put my name into mylife.com, and while they had my address and birthdate correct, pretty much everything else was wrong. I didn’t pay for the details, but it was clear that the phone number, photos, and work history were completely erroneous. There were seven items in my work history and not a single one bore any relation to any place I’ve actually worked.
Individual voting data is exempt from public record requirements. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it; otherwise, the secret ballot would be meaningless.
It’s not just exempt - the data literally does not exist. For example, in Washington state, where we vote by mail, you put your ballot inside a security envelope, which goes inside the mailing envelope. You sign and date the mailing envelope. When it’s received, your signature is verified, and you’re marked off as having voted. Then the security envelope is removed, moved to a separate pile, and counted separately. Once that’s done, there’s no way to tie the vote back to its voter. I’m sure other states do something similar.
Yeah, I put in my first and last names, age and zip code. There were 19 results, none of them my age or in my zip code. I don’t know what mylife is doing, but it’s not doing it well.
I’m always interested in these sites. Most of them at least know my address, but this one didn’t. It did find the other guy in Missouri who shares my name, though. It does know my wife, and I can tell that it got her “interests” directly from her LinkedIn profile.
It knows my two brothers. One it pegs as a member of the Republican Party. I’m not sure if he’s an official member, though he does usually vote R. It also pegs him as a supporter of organized labor, which he is not. The site says both brothers are supporters of the Second Amendment, which I guess is true, although neither of them are very vocal or active about it, and I don’t think either belongs to the NRA. They both do own guns.
Hopefully no one puts a lot of stock in what these sites say. The accuracy is all over the place.
Depends, in Ohio, when you get your ballot, they write the number of the ballot into the voter registration book. I don’t know how they do it for absentee ballots, but I assume it is similar.
I assume that the number is never correlated with the ballot, unless the ballot needs to be pulled for some reason, and that that info is not compiled anywhere, but the information is theoretically retrievable.
Also, depending on how much you trust the machines, it is entirely possible that the info gets collated and transmitted at the time you scan your ballot.
Is the number on the ballot permanently affixed? I remember before we went to vote-by-mail, you’d get your ballot, fill it out, then you removed the top part that had the ballot serial number, and then fed the remainder into the machine.
If Ohio really has a way to track cast ballots back to their voters, that seems like a really bad idea to me.
The number was still affixed when I put it into the scanner. Maybe I was supposed to rip it off, but I don’t think there were any perforations, and I’ve voted quite a number of times at this point, seems someone would have pointed out I was doing it wrong.
It would require quite a bit of collation in order to actually match votes to people, and you would need access to things that I am pretty sure that you are not supposed to have access to, but in theory, that information does seem to be retrievable.
Here’s some info. (IN PDF FORMAT) MyLife does data analytics for charities to help build donor profiles.
They got your info from their clients.
Was this part of the ‘free’ service, or did you pay? If paid, how much?
If it makes you feel any better, I don’t exist at all according to MyLife, even though my personal information is widely available because of my profession.
I wonder how much keying your info into their website moves you up in their database of “persons of interest” to gather more info on?
e.g. did RNATB just seed a data-pearl that will grow to engulf him? :eek: