BS: How did they find me?

Subject: BS: How did they find me?
From: Mike in Brunswick
Date: 24 Nov 16 - 10:50 PM

A few days ago I received a "Dear alumnus" letter soliciting funds for a Catholic elementary school in Los Angeles from which I graduated in 1954. Since then, I have had 16 mailing addresses, most of them 3000 miles or more from LA. I have not stayed in touch with anyone from that school. If they had any records on me, I assume they were written or typewritten. Certainly not in any automated database. My name is a very common one. According to Whitepages.com, I share it with over 12,000 people in the United States. So how then, after 62 years, did I receive this letter at my current address in Brunswick, Maine?

Mike

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Nov 16 - 11:01 PM

You'd be surprised what "they" can find out about you via your use of the Internet. Perhaps they have your social security number.

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Nov 16 - 11:11 PM

For some months I used to get emails from a school somewhere in the States asking me to come to social events for old boys, and suggesting to send a donation. Eventually emails to them telling them I hadn't been there, and that there might be some actual former student with my name who might like to hear from them did the trick, and they stopped coming.   So it might just be coincidence.

But we all build up a trail, and these bots can be very persistant. "You can run, but you can't hide" applies to all of us these days...

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 24 Nov 16 - 11:17 PM

Alien technology tracking implant deep inside rectum... 👽

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: leeneia
Date: 25 Nov 16 - 10:38 AM

Why don't you ask them? They're not going to shoot you.

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: leeneia
Date: 25 Nov 16 - 11:13 AM

I apologize. That was sarcastic.

What I should have said was, these people are not hackers, who have to hide their identities from the law. They'll probably tell you how they find people.

My guess is that they found out from somebody in your family or from a family friend.

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: Gurney
Date: 25 Nov 16 - 10:05 PM

Possibly through the church?
Every time your name goes online it leaves a footprint.
Facebook would be my first guess. Youtube, Twitter. I've even found things I posted on Mudcat repeated on Wiki, and I didn't put them there.

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Nov 16 - 11:04 PM

My son hasn't lived with me since 1992, and I have lived in four different places since then. I still get mail from him from the Catholic high school he attended. In recent years, I have been getting membership application forms for him from AARP - which really makes me feel old.

But fundraising organizations do request change-of-address information when the stuff they send can't be delivered, and they use that information to build an address history for a person. It's no deep, dark secret - keeping accurate address information is how marketing and fundraising people survive - and they share it within the industry. It's how I survived as a government investigator, too. I used many of the same techniques the marketers use, although my inquiries were more strictly regulated than those of the marketers.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Nov 16 - 12:44 AM

Pay a small sum and you'd be surprised what can be found out about you, and rather easily at that.

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: Mr Red
Date: 26 Nov 16 - 07:00 AM

blame social media and people who knew you. Plus a lot of places have placed their archive digitally.
Information, and there is a lot of it on the internet, can allow the bots to triangulate (multiangulate?) and anyway it is a percentage thing. e-mails are cheap, the cost of being wrong isn't that great!
I do have a unique name (for the UK) so I have long used nom de guerres and never use my birthdate for anything that doesn't matter. Consequently I get advertising targeted at 30 somethings, which I happily ignore. And I stopped having birthdays at the age of 28 anyway! Peter Pan is one of my names!

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 26 Nov 16 - 08:01 AM

Nobody ever finds me. Sniff.

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Nov 16 - 10:42 AM

If you have ever seen one of the online reports, it usually includes such information as your schools, previous addresses, employment history, criminal record including driving offenses, and possibly an estimated credit score.

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: leeneia
Date: 26 Nov 16 - 11:16 AM

Mike in Brunswick, where art thou?

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: Mike in Brunswick
Date: 26 Nov 16 - 03:36 PM

Sorry. We've had house guests and my online time has been limited. Thanks to all for the comments.

I wasn't complaining about being found by my school. My memories of the place are mostly positive, or at least not negative. I was just curious about how it was done. If I had graduated in the late 1980's, I could understand it. But how, in the pre-personal computer, pre-Internet mid fifties did my personal information, such as it was, make it from those 3 by 5 cards to that mammoth database where it all resides today?

Mike

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: Kenny B (inactive)
Date: 27 Nov 16 - 06:32 AM

Coincidence?
In my humble opinion Mike they didn't find YOU because they were looking for YOU they "found " you because you had bought something on the net and the vendor or their agents sold your email address along with numerous others to them.
Until recently I received minimal spam because my email address was an anagram of my name which on the face of it doesn't make sense as a name .... I bought a tuner/capo from Amazon which came from China.
From that time the spam/junk has increased dramatically. C'est la vie

Subject: RE: BS: How did they find me?
From: Thompson
Date: 28 Nov 16 - 02:45 AM

Cory Doctorow's book Little Brother (downloadable free from his website) is based on all this stuff. Gripping read!