I need to replace an old toilet and had to order one at Lowe’s. It seems they only stock the “tall” version of toilets now days, rather than old fashioned regular height toilets.
We go to a Point of Sale system where a staff member logs in to place the order. It looks like its running a VT100 emulator – like 1970s or 1980s technology. It’s apparently old Unix but looks like DOS, if you get the picture (yeah, its ancient technology).
They enter my phone number to look me up in their database – and it returns someone with my name in a city and state I have never been in.
We are told how wonderful information systems are to improving efficiencies and effectiveness in organizations, and in presenting new marketing opportunities.
But bad data and bad data mining occur everywhere and render such ideas moot.
Last week, we received a sample products package for Mom’s who’ve recently given birth, for a family member who has never lived in this house and who is not pregnant nor recently given birth, and which was addressed to her pre-married name. A bit of looking online finds others have received these sample products. One recipient called the company and found they buy customer lists from many stores like Toys R Us, and what not, and run data mining software to discern facts about people. And then promptly mail them a sample products package as part of their marketing efforts. Garbage in –> Garbage out.
Meanwhile, my GMail account became so overwhelmed with email for other people that I had to trash it. Except I can’t – the apps I have on my phone are under my email address. I have, however, moved all of my email correspondence to a different email provider. However, my GMail account receives billing statements for other people with the same name who likely entered an incorrect email address for our similar names.
We know that GMail runs artificial intelligence analysis on our email to build up a marketing profile. It is not scanning for keywords – it is literally the equivalent of someone reading all of your email and taking notes (another reason to leave GMail). GMail is taking notes on other people’s correspondence but attributing those emails to me. Google is building a dossier on me, for marketing purposes, based upon analyzing emails that have nothing to do with me – in other words, Google’s dossier on me is full of crap.
Most of the email I receive on that account is to other people who entered the wrong email address. Consequently, I receive monthly billing statements from businesses I’ve never done business with, in cities and state’s I have never lived in. I receive reminders to take my BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Volkswagen vehicles in for maintenance (I own none of those). I also receive notices of bills not paid (apparently I am a dead beat BMW owner except none of these are mine). I receive all kinds of emails for products and services I have never used, from vendors I do not know. The email account is completely wrecked. Yet Google continues to analyze email in that account without recognizing its all garbage.
One time when we pulled a credit report on ourselves, we found data records saying we had lived in places we had never lived, and employment history showing us working at places we had never been to (we requested the records be corrected).
All of these grand databases that are being data mined to improve marketing are full of crap. No amount of artificial intelligence, data science or data mining can fix that these databases are full of crap information.
