November 11th, 2018 – Privacy Shmivacy.

When I got home from NERFA tonight Kristen handed me a piece of “weird mail” – an advertisement from Verizon addressed to our house with the name:

“Sharif [last name]
ilyAIMY”

Initially – ha – yeah, weird piece of mail, laugh.

But then I was wondering HOW that connection would be made. Obviously that information is out there – but if a business is harvesting this information, how’d they source it?

I’d point to Facebook as an obvious culprit – we know they sell your information – ilyAIMY’s Facebook page is owned by me and Heather… they certainly have our home addresses – not because I’ve personally given it to them, but because that’s where I login from most frequently and I don’t spoof my DNS or anything. It’d be easy if Sharif had ever listed himself as an “employee” of ilyAIMY (the “works at” function seems a logical connector?) but a) he hasn’t and b) Sharif’s Facebook identity includes his middle name. He’s named simply as “Sharif” in the “about” section of ilyAIMY’s Facebook page, so that checks out – we could probably be pretty firm that that’s the source is Heather also receives a piece of mail for him since she’s co-owner of the Facebook site… additionally, it would seem logical that if this was the source she and I would also receive mail addressed to “ilyAIMY” for our other bandmates as well.

Sharif’s listed on ilyAIMY.com. I own ilyAIMY.com. The website and business of ilyAIMY are registered to this address. We receive checks for ilyAIMY mailed to this address, etc – but – it seems unlikely that Verizon is doing web searches of a given address, finding businesses associated with the address and then searching the websites of said businesses. That seems pretty tenuous. However, then I’d expect – again – to maybe receive mail for my other bandmates (though Heather probably wouldn’t).

Where else is the information of my home address connected with Sharif as an employee of ilyAIMY? Heather and I are the owners of ilyAIMY. Sharif doesn’t work with us frequently enough that he shows up in our tax documents, but I write him checks. I’m connected to ilyAIMY, I write Sharif checks. Banking records?

There was a time when a gig with Sharif on the bill required a security check. Those are often performed by third parties which I could imagine eventually selling the information – that would be kind of huge news but I think his name would show up in a different format.

Other places where Sharif is listed as a bandmate? Reverbnation, Myspace, any number of sites like that. Hell – the information is available on Wikipedia – most sites probably have a TOS phrase something like “This information may be shared with third-parties to provide more relevant services and advertisements to users” – so yeah, they could’ve sold my information, but it’s interesting that that would connect my bandmate to my home address. That would mean either one of the businesses that has had my banking information (like Reverbnation, Bandcamp, something like that) OR I guess just any business cross-referenced with another business (like Facebook) that HAS my home address…this doesn’t seem that unlikely, the more I think about it, but it reminds us of the depth of information gathered.

Again, I don’t know that this is something that WORRIES me in any capacity. We get misaddressed mail all the time and this is no more a threat to me than any of that – but I’m very, very interested in how this information was connected. I’d Love to know more. If I was a European citizen I’d be allowed to ask. As an American, not so much.

The world is far, far, far too complex for one little rob to figure out //