In article MPG.21b60d5be5291d01989708
@News.Individual.NET, Charlie Pridham says...
In article ,
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In article ,
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In article , 'Mike' says...
Junk Mail don't you just love it :-((


Once a week the postman delivers a big pile of (none-
addressed) leaflets and catalogues. It seems to be common
practice here in France. It comes in quite handy as we have
a wood burning stove, and since we don't take any
newspapers the leaflets all get used for lighting the fire.

Kind of so many organisations to send us free paper to
light our fire :-)

We shred ours, it makes good compost, I smile though that I personally
get on average 3 offers of car insurance per day, strange really as I
have never held a driving licence or owned a vehicle! Just think how much
cheaper car insurance could be without the pointless waste, never mind
the stationary, the cost of postage alone must be enormous, I worked it
out a few years ago and to me alone it was over £300 per year, admittidly
not all from the same firm.

Todays post brings 2 car insurance offers from Norwich union two from
Privilege and one from Sheilas wheels! total 5, not a record but a good
day for the compost heap!

I would not be surprised that you are being targeted for
car insurance because your address is possibly flagged up
on a database as not having any car insurance currently
associated with it - so therefore you must need some!

A few years ago I did some IT work for a large UK company
that collated and processed data from numerous sources. It
is absolutely incredible the amount of information known
about both individuals and addresses. This is frequently
used for both highly targeted mailing campaigns right down
to companies deciding where to build shopping centres, open
a McDonalds etc etc. At the time I left they were creating
a monster sized database that collated everything ever
bought where they could be identified as the purchaser via
their credit card number or loyalty card. These companies
know more about you than you do.

Note that if you paid for a copy of the dossier about you
it would only include a tiny fraction about what is
associated with you, typically only information on the
credit check database. Lots of other databases are created
"on the fly", collated from other databases for specific
campaigns.

There was talk at the time of also associating this
information with on-line computer activity to provide very
targeted advertising while surfing the web. Combine this
with RF tags embedding in clothing and you could soon be
walking past stores and a screen will light up and say
something like "Hello Charlie Pridham - Isn't it time you
replaced that old coat you are wearing? We have a new range
of coats in your size. Come in and look". Big brother
already exists.
--
David in Normandy