Continuing on the theme of the previous post – how does the marketing division of a telco or an utility company get our details ? Obviously, we dont call every telco in the country and give them our details. Once you register for getting a basic landline connection the information goes into the Whitepages or the local telephone directory, unless you dont want them to be published. In Australia, there is a charge not to display our details in the phone book. Everyone is aware of this, most of us dont want our details to be published, even though if it is only our name and address. Sometimes that itself is more dangerous than it seems.
Anyway, if we have not displayed our details, how else can anyone get our name and address ? My view, it all depends on our spending patterns. For example, I can call up my local pizza place, and after placing the order, he confirms the address by himself, without me revealing it. Well, in the most primitive form of storing data, he might have an order book that he looks up with extraordinary speed and confirms the address. If the data is stored on a Excel spreadsheet, it makes the process easier for him to get the address. That is the most simplest form of Customer Loyalty. From Loyalty comes Customer Profiling. The pizza guy might want to determine how I will behave when he introduces a new veg gourmet pizza priced $2.50 more than the avg gourmet pizza ? Will I respond to the new offer ? He simply looks up my previous X orders and he will get a fair idea of whether I will buy it or not ?
What if the pizza guy were to get some extra money from revealing the information that I like Veg gourmet pizzas to a company that does a survey on the pizza eating habits of the public in Glen Huntly ? So, my details are sent on to the marketing company for the survey on pizzas and they might collect more information to do another survey on use of mobile phones and the type of calls that we make.
When do we get affected by all this ? Only when, it becomes acute and somebody changes our providers by pretending to be us. Otherwise, we are not even aware that this sort of data exchange goes on behind our backs. And to what to say of some people who see a lovely BMW up as a prize in a $2 raffle ? Dont they give out their details then ? Do they know what that raffles company is doing with the details ? Recently, when I went to the Australian Open 2006, I was asked to provide my full name with my address and my telephone number, all in the name of security by Ticketek. What if, someone from Ticketek where to think that they can somewhat improve their balance sheet bottomline to share details with other credit card providers ?
Do we get affected by spam mails in our Inbox, yes we do, but is there anything that can be done effectively to counter the spam mails. Even if, we use the best spamguard, one or two of them still filters through to the Inbox. We delete them and keep hoping that we dont miss any important mails by deleting them. Marketing material, through calls and mailouts, are a nuisance, that is true, but how long is it going to take us to throw them into the bin ? Turns out that some people dont have the patience to do that.
Anyone feeling compelled or pushed to living in caves without a telephone or a computer after seeing all this ?
February 18, 2006 at 7:51 am
urupadiyaana post da. keeping writing on these lines.
February 18, 2006 at 8:35 am
Karthi – thanks da. Will try to write on the same lines.
February 18, 2006 at 9:14 am
Nowadays, living without telephone and internet, it’s something which is almost impossible. But it’s true that it’s really dangerous that people can use our details for any kind of purposes. World becomes more scary and scary than ever.
Oh by the way Deepak, just wondering … do you any Indian shops where I can buy Hindi movies or rent Hindi movies or buying song cds ?
Thanks a lot for your help.
February 18, 2006 at 9:42 am
Mona – depending on where u live – there is MKS Store in Dandenong, or Quality Groceries in Glen Huntly where u can buy Hindi DVDs for $4 (for 2 movies).
February 20, 2006 at 9:23 am
Deepak – thats a good post..
In UK, they have things like Data Protection Act & things like that. Many ‘responsible’ companies are taking steps to ensure that data – however trivial that may be doesn’t slip into the air. As a DBA, both in my current role and in my previous role, I come across many private information that would be a gold mine for the marketers. I could see how far these companies go to protect those data.
But at the same time, when I get marketing calls from total strangers I am left to wonder how these guys get hold of my data.