| Bulk data collection is not costly to collect, its cents per person; if that. Javascript running on the visitors endpoint is not costly at all (the customer pays for it). Bulk data purchases of anonymized data are also quite common, and easily correlated back to the original profile (person) pre-de-anonymization. A 1-2 month period in a metropolitan area (50k+) for a bulk sale would get you all the anonymized location data for every single person in the region, cost you about $1200, this gives you devices, travel, work, home, patterns (what restaurants you go to, what your likely demographic is, what you do every day). That is 2.4cents per person (at 50k, price going down the larger the metropolitan population). There's an entire data processing pipeline devoted to this in a sub-niche of IT called Master Data Management. The development of Chrome was motivated by the last mile click data, GiS collects way more than you think as well and its enabled by default in all android devices. Even if you never connect a device up, remote sensing networks may offer a connection on the unregulated bands in a mesh network like Amazon Sidewalk, and devices with radios often beacon semi-regularly. Large companies share signal data as well, and there other sharing agreements where only a token effort is done on de-anonymization but correlations remain the same allowing deduction of the original profiles. All they need is enough points in common, which is not that high. The business is in selling the memberships involved for access to this data without a warrant ever being needed. You perform a lookup on the data, and can use that pretty much however you want no restrictions (within the law). That is literally the product that they are selling... people. Some day try splurging and buy access to view your accurint profile. I almost guarantee you'll be shocked. Also they don't keep this that well guarded as evidenced by the continuous rolling release of announcements regarding data breaches. You think they don't import info that's posted from a data breach to back-check their existing records? This is big data we're talking about. Papers? Is this your normal way home from work comrade? How long does it normally take you to get home? Big brother is watching you. |