Website stockpiles personal information for marketing [View all]

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ATLANTA —

Your personal information is no longer your private information.

Marketing companies are building profiles on people, tracking the cost your home, how many kids you have and how much you spend online.

For decades companies have been gathering data on consumers, but marketing technology firm Acxiom is now letting people see what it knows.

On the website AboutTheData.com, you can type in your name, address, birthday and the last four digits of your social security number to reveal a trove of personal information that has been collected.

The website lists data on you, your home, your car, your income, your spending, and even your interests.

Author Jim Kelly sat down with Channel 2’s John Bachman to take a look at his profile on the website.

“They know my salary range. Wow. They know my investing. Wow,” Kelly said. “Average spent for online purchases, total dollars spent. Wow.”

Kelly said he isn’t surprised the information is out there, but he is surprised how easy it was to find all in one place.

“It’s disturbing. What I don’t like about it is – where does it stop?” Kelly said. “It’s going to make people start talking about, ‘What are the limits?’ How far can you take this before enough people say, ‘Look, you gotta stop this’?”

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/online/website-stockpiles-personal-information-marketing/nbcp6/