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Comment by Vorh | Hacker News Reader

As far as I know, the database is owned by the USPS, and they can't do their job _without_ that information. You can dislike Brave for buying access to the information, or dislike USPS for selling said information. But the information is already collected by USPS so they can do their job.

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Even if the database contains banding by household income for example? Why does the USPS need that to do their job? Brave doesn’t show what targeting was used…

The US Census is public record and breaks down all kinds of demographic information by zip code. The USPS is almost certainly just using census data. Even if they didn't provide the convenience, a marketer could easily replicate what they currently do.

If you have a problem with the US Census Bureau collecting demographic data or making it public, those are certainly valid positions to hold. However, point your ire at the right target.

You haven’t answered my point as to why the USPS needs this extra info to do their job?

Because I thought that was self-explanatory: part of their job is selling advertising. Cash is tight enough at the post office as is. Why let third party marketers sell advertisers public census data instead of just providing it directly?

Why can't they do their job without that information?

You can send a letter to an address without the USPS

a.) Having the address in their database

b.) Knowing who is living there

So Brave, the privacy company, is using a service that collects data about people.

Brave never has access to your information. We didn't use "a service that collects data about people," we used the EDDM offering of the United States Postal Service, which has legitimate claim to names and addresses. This service is attractive in part because it exposes no data to Brave in the process.

"We don't use a service that collects data about people, we use a service (USPS) which collects data (names, addresses) about people".

Glad I switched back to Firefox quite some time ago, a company which thinks paying others to collect data about you is fine as long as they "don't have access".

If you pay Google for ads, you also don't have access to their data. Still they collect it, you pay them for using the data they've collected.

Google, USPS? I'm not a socialist, so I don't care if a state owned corporation or a privately owned one is paid to collect the data.

The United States Postal Service handles mail for the United States. Them having my name and address is quite a bit different than Google having the same data (in addition to the mountains of other data-types Google tends to harvest).

Switching back to Firefox means your keystrokes are literally handed off to Google in real-time. Please take some time to review the privacy practices of your preferred browser: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf

"Them having my name and address is quite a bit different than Google having the same data"

As stated above, they don't need that data. Instead of "me" think of your customers.

"Switching back to Firefox means your keystrokes are literally handed off to Google in real-time."

This is not about me, but about Brave.

That’s not nuanced enough. Information isn’t just information to a user, it’s information combined with purpose. A user would expect the USPS to use address data to deliver them mail. They would expect the USPS to sell their address data for the purpose of (gratuitous hyperbole) targeting a drone strike. In this case, I would doubt the user would expect their address data to be sold by the USPS for direct mail shots.

This is the essence of GDPR really. The legal basis of “legitimate interest” means you don’t have to seek consent because of course a user would expect you to process that data in the course of the provided service. To go outside of that service you need to get explicit and informed opt-in consent.

Be careful with the right wording here: this USPS service is not selling any data.

It is just delivering snail mail.

The only data flow here is from Brave to USPS: please send our mailing to this definition of the target group.

USPS does not send Brave a list of addresses or even names. Brave does not give USPS a list of addresses or names.

This is exactly how Google operates yet many folks seem to define / consider that as “selling the data”.

It’s really about “leveraging access to / monetizing the data”.

The point is that by paying for EDDM, Brave is funding and supporting that financial model (targeted advertising) which many folks who use Brave want to eliminate.

So some amount of annoyance expressed by their users makes sense to me.

"our EDDM vendor" seems to imply a third party getting the addresses to print (because there's no need to keep the vendor name secret if it's the USPS), but maybe they just thought it sounds better than saying "the USPS".

Someone has to print the mailers. The USPS lists the EDDM vendors on its website and they work through the USPS.

https://printerdirectory.usps.com/listing/#/results

The mailer itself and the address can be printed separately. I didn't dive deep enough to confirm it, but I think these companies print the mailer and USPS prints the addresses.

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