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    Wednesday, June 08, 2005

    Surprise! Data On You Is Wrong

     
    Data-brokers like ChoicePoint and Acxiom suck so bad that in a recent Privacy Activism study, they were found to have inaccuracies in one hundred percent of the reports in the sample, including incorrectly identifying subjects' sex and even incorrectly describing several participants as officers of companies.
     
    Good old Boing Boing.
    This is important, though: 
    The small sample size of this study (eleven participants) means that care must be taken in projecting these results to the overall population.
     
    Eleven people.  Seems reliable. 
    Tell you what, still, though, personal experience says that you really, really have to be careful about what goofy data you have out there.  At this moment there is a credit report out there with my name on it that says that I had an American Express card in 1972 and a GM car loan in 1974.  I think I was still watching this show at the time.  Get thee to Annual Credit Report and check your stuff at some point.  A very safe prediction is that YOU have something wrong on your report, especially if you haven't looked in a while.
     

     
     

    1 Comment:

    Anonymous said...

    Very true. The few times I have looked at credit reports myself, there have always been mistakes.

    -Jefth

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