There’s nothing new about companies tracking your online activity and spending habits. But the extent of the information they collect might surprise you.
Every consumer has "secret" scores that are determined by factors such as how long you're willing to stay on hold when calling a business and whether you return items to a store, reports The New York Times.
“A low score sends you to the back of the queue; high scores get you elite treatment,” Kashmir Hill wrote in The New York Times.
Up until recently you couldn’t always get access to the data that was being collected, but thanks to new laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and a 2018 European law called General Data Protection Regulation, now you can.
Hill was able to track down the file that a company called Sift, which tracks 16,000 factors for companies like Airbnb and OkCupid, and what he found surprised him.
“More than 400 pages long, it contained all the messages I’d ever sent to hosts on Airbnb; years of Yelp delivery orders; a log of every time I’d opened the Coinbase app on my iPhone,” Hill wrote.
Here’s how to get your data according to The New York Times:
- Sift, which determines consumer trustworthiness, asks you to email privacy@sift.com. You'll then have to fill out a Google form.
- Zeta Global, which identifies people with a lot of money to spend, lets you request your data via an online form.
- Retail Equation, which helps companies such as Best Buy and Sephora decide whether to accept or reject a product return, will send you a report if you email returnactivityreport@theretailequation.com.
- Riskified, which develops fraud scores, will tell you what data it has gathered on your possible crookedness if you contact privacy@riskified.com.
- Kustomer, a database company that provides what it calls "unprecedented insight into a customer's past experiences and current sentiment," tells people to email privacy@kustomer.com.
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