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Comment by MSFT_Edging | Hacker News Reader

I've had the DMV sell my info multiple times. Every time I update my registration I get months of insurance scam calls.

I had my landlord's property manager sign me up for a identity theft protection service without my permission.

Equifax sells any info about me it can get.

Google has a full profile for my public ip it seems and will fill in suggestions across multiple youtube sessions where one is logged in and the other isn't, on separate machines.

Is this really all technology has to offer? For every new break through, we have 100s of rent seeking middlemen exposing every aspect of our lives.

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The don't-bother-unless-it-hyperscales majority attitude of tech company funding and growth heavily limits the variety of new things that the tech world at large can offer. There are simply not that many types of tech business models that are capable of scaling fast and quickly without massive infusions of cash, but it turns out that data brokering, large dataset analysis, and profile building are a few of those things, and so the market success of these business looms large in the technology space.

I had hoped that rising interest rates and a tighter consumer market would change that dynamic somewhat but unfortunately for now it seems to be an incredibly well entrenched status quo that doesn't appear to have a clear path away from

DMV can't sell your information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_...

They certainly can under one of the permissible purposes enumerated in the DPPA.

There is a private toll company operating the 407 highway in Canada. They are capable of sending bills to New York drivers. That can't happen without the NY DMV providing vehicle registration data access to a foreign business or an intermediary.

Yes they can. Typically you need a business license or a PI credential. I worked for the DMV.

One example: https://egov.maryland.gov/mva/

What is the usual script of those insurance scam calls?

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