How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation

Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by petewarden on Sunday January 03, 2010 @10:28AM (#1028582)

There's a little-known world of commercial services like Rapleaf that give marketers information from a list of email addresses. I wrote a test service to show you what information's available on your address:

http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2009/12/what-can...

The scary thing is that if they can get your full name and rough location, it's then often possible to get a full address (see whitepages.com for a consumer-facing example). That then ties into other datasets that have information on income, occupation, marital status, etc for every household in the US.

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Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by petewarden on Friday January 08, 2010 @01:44PM (#1040123)

I've just released the code for this as open source:

http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/01/how-to-f...

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Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by jacquesm on Sunday January 03, 2010 @04:39PM (#1029188)

It didn't know anything about any address I threw at it, so I feel pretty secure. And I'm as public as it probably gets, I make absolutely no effort to hide my identity or whereabouts.

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Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by petewarden on Sunday January 03, 2010 @05:50PM (#1029290)

The address [email protected] you mention in your profile gives a hit for an Amazon account in Kansas:

http://web.mailana.com/labs/findbyemail/index.php?email=j%40...

Doubt that's you though, probably just an MD5 clash, since it's a long way from the Netherlands?

I only see one other check in my access log from the same IP that checked for your address about an hour ago; mishu<snip>.com. That did find a flickr account, though it appears to be private, so not much info there.

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Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by njharman on Sunday January 03, 2010 @11:17AM (#1028628)

> The scary thing is ...

Sorry, I remain not scared.

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Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by petewarden on Sunday January 03, 2010 @11:33AM (#1028649)

What could possibly go wrong when there's an easily accessible database of detailed information on every individual? Move along, nothing to see here.

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Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by loup-vaillant on Monday January 04, 2010 @04:43AM (#1030065)

I assume you were ironic. Anyway, what could (and did) go wrong is the systematic extermination of a particular subset of people in this database. (Sorry for the Godwin point reached so fast.)

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Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by ams6110 on Sunday January 03, 2010 @12:20PM (#1028697)

Yeah, really this is NOT anything new. Direct Marketing service companies have been providing this for years. Back in the mid 1990s we were sending one such company reels of 1/2" tape with names and addresses, and getting back reports of age/income etc. distribution.

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Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by ErrantX on Sunday January 03, 2010 @01:18PM (#1028784)

Agreed; speaking personally anyone willing to spend the 10 minutes with a whois database service, my email address and a little digging on my sites could find out pretty much every address I've ever lived at.

(bonus points if someone does it and gets all 3 :))

But I know that data exists - and for now I am happy for people to discover it about me.

Speaking for non-techy types, though, it is something to be concerned about. Less so for marketers as things like stalkers and fraudsters etc. It's worth raising these issues gently to try and encourage people to understand what data is accessible about them - and ensure their comfortable with that.

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