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Comment by bigiain | Hacker News Reader

Like nobody ever saw that coming...

"Sure, your privacy is important to us - but not to our liquidator, and not as important as maximising shareholder value, sorry..."

I expect 1060 West Addison St, Chicago, IL, 60613 is about to get a bunch more spam addressed to Elwood Blues. :-)

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I went to RadioShack in Boston around the late 90's to buy some batteries, and the clerk asked for my name and address. I was not in a mood to play their personal information game, so I just said "John Doe" thinking he'd just drop it. He then responded "of 123 Maple Street?" "Yup".

Any time I've bought something at RadioShack since, I've made sure to use John Doe at 123 Maple Street in the city the Store was located in. Maybe half the time someone had already beat me to it.

When I worked their seasonally a few years ago we thankfully had a sane manager that knew people didn't want to give away their personal information (especially for small purchases) so we had a 'Shack, Radio' name with the address of the store (As the POS required an address to be inputted). Unfortunately, we still needed to ask for the larger purchases as they would go ballistic if all purchases were tied to that address.

And did you ever refuse to sell to someone who refused their data?

I used to roll over, decades ago, but at least in the last decade I just calmly and firmly say "no" while looking them right in the eye. They just say OK and take my money, I don't know what they do behind the register.

For the uninitiated, is there cultural significance to 123 Maple Street?

It's around the corner from 321 Elm.

123 because, well, it's in order. And Maple street because there's one in almost every town in America. One could also use 1st St, Main St, Oak St, etc. Maple has a nice ring.

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/123_Fake_Street

No, it's just an extremely generic name and the employee looked up John Doe on the computer and it was already in there because of someone else who didn't want to give up their name.

I'm going to start registering that everywhere now, just to see how long it lasts.

Thanks! I caught the 1060 Addison reference from the Blues Brothers. Was thinking I was behind the times on something similar here.

In a bankruptcy all claims by creditors must be satisfied prior to any reimbursement to shareholders. Given that companies generally go bankrupt because their liabilities to creditors exceed their assets, this almost always means that all shares in the company are reduced to a value of nothing, the rare exception being when a company's assets exceed its liabilities, but goes bankrupt because it is unable to liquidate its assets fast enough to pay its creditors on time. But even in that case it's likely that shareholders get fractions of pennies on the dollar.

Double that, its the same address I use too! lol

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