Speculation elsewhere (a Twitter thread I've since lost) is that car dealerships are simply uploading every possible US phone number as a "contact". It seems reasonable, and I can't really think of other reasons car dealerships in states I've never visited have added me (or at least some info Facebook associates with me) as an ad target.

Why would this help them? Facebook already lets you target by geography, they could just target all US residents much more easily.

Advertisers want more control over who they target than just geographic regions. I'd bet that Facebook let's you select demographic targeting using all of the information they hold on your contacts, so by uploading every phone number you can target people based on geography, age, income, family size, etc.

But you can't target demos for users not in your contacts? That makes no sense.

Yes. That's why when you buy a new car there is a flood of 3rd party warranty snail mail spam.

(NB: There are very valid reasons WHY this information is in the public record...mostly to make it harder to fence stolen vehicles.)

Either that, or the DMV sells them. (I use one-off e-mail addresses, and [email protected] is _really_ popular)

Absolutely DMV sells everything on you. State I live winter time - Florida - when I got speeding ticket, less than 4 days later my mailbox was full of ticket schools’ solicitations. They knew everything about me and my ticket. They even knew time and street and speed I was pulled over and cleverly used that in marketing titles: “clocked 67 in 40 miles with highschool on the corner of Oak and Main St? withiut knowledgeable attorney that can cost you 90 days in county jail. Call now”. Its even worse - a friend also in Florida had DUI. Day three a lawyer knocks on his door bringing pizza and beers (!) to sit down discuss his case for free evaluation! Totally unsolicited knock at his door.

That’s not the DMV selling anything, it’s the clerk of court...everyday they publish a list of new cases (public record) and your ticket is attached to the case and the ticket contains all relevant data (name, address, license #, dob, charge, etc...) and an added bonus the court will also link your dmv driving record to the ticket case so the “scrapers” get your dmv record anyway (for free). They do the same for foreclosure cases.

Same here. I think they upload your address and the fact that you have a car and then attempt to sell you another car based on those two factors (as well as age and gender).

Mine is about 70% US car dealerships and I'm not American. I guess they've been buying up some low quality contact lists