Just how deeply profiled are we? I'm genuinely curious about what big corpo categorizes me as. How well do they know me? What do they care about? What are the most crucial points that I should keep private? It really makes one wonder...
If you're interested, look into one of their most effective and popular tools, Clear (by Reuters). For a large sum of money, you can scrape the most comprehensive database on people in the western world. It will give the buyer information on what you look like, when you were born (and whether or not you're dead), what banks you have accounts with, how many cars you own, where you live, what property you own, who you're married to, who your children are (where they live, if they're old enough and you run clears on them), social media accounts, and other info.
But it's not the US government and Five Eyes spying on you - it's a private corporation... What no one mentions is that these countries have very lucrative contracts with Reuters to maintain this database for their use.
The police also use it to find information on you if they feel they need to really get into your business. And companies use it to check that you're the "right fit" before hiring you. Banks use it before giving out loans to make sure you are who you say you are... I've even heard stories of some landlords using it to make sure their tenants are the "right kind of person".
If you want more info on tools like these, and how to thwart them, look up "The Privacy, Security, & OSINT Show" by Michael Bazzell.
What's interesting was that back in 2019, they gave access to students' data for 47¢ per name. One of the biggest customer of this was JAMRS, a military recruitment program run by the United States Department of Defense.
There’s people that think “ohh I saw that ad on a website right after talking about the same product with my friend, they must be listening on my phone’s mic”.
We’re so heavily profiled they don’t even need to listen on the mic. And the feds don’t even need to spy on you, they can just buy the data of where you are and what you’re doing.
“Everything from daycare to public transportation, toll roads, fuel and fuel taxes, auto purchases and maintenance, dry cleaners, nail spas, restaurants, clothiers, hair stylists, dog walkers, nannies and office leases suffer when people work from home”
