Friday, April 17, 2020

Secret Consumer Score

 I recall getting a report card in school. Grades for the classes. Then a Deportment score. 
 The classes reports were understood and had a known range or score. A-F or 0-100 or similar. Deportment was free form and could be misunderstood. And verbose.

 Same now in the cyber world. We are aware of credit scores. Easily understood, though not always agreed.
 We might have a deportment score as well. I have yet to find a common name for this score or rating. Quite a few companies track and supply their customers with your consumer scores. The companies I have seen in reports:
 Sift
 Zeta Global
 Retail Equation
 Kustomer
 Riskified
 Consumer advocates who report on such matters tell interesting tales of the report contents. A reporter for the New York Times got a 400 page report on their activity that produced a customer score. The report included most of their messages to Airbnb, Yelp, etc. The report also included the date, time, device information, IP address, and more.
 Clients of these services use the information and consumer score to assess your trustworthiness. How long you have waited on hold, do you return items often, order take out late evenings, etc.
 For a period of time the companies might provide your report if you were under the GDPR protections. Now the response to a request for your data might be denied. The recent California Consumer Privacy Act has given some flux to the response requirements of these companies.
 The customers of these companies (You are the product, not a customer) use the reports and scores to help prevent fraud, flag big spenders, and perhaps give you the VIP treatment.
 A shock to the reports is how far back the data is kept. A shock is how arbitrary the scoring might be.

 I have requested my data. I will update this post if I obtain any.

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