Do you know what people know about you?
Worse still… do you know what people think they know about you?
Beacon Dodsworth are a seller of geographical demographics. Sound harmless. Only they gather data from various sources, and then package it in ways which companies can use to market their ways most effectively to the people who match their target audience.
One of their tools categorises people by their P² type: a broad demographic brush swept across society, which makes me one of 4.42% of the UK who are members of “Contented Families”, a sub group of the 8.30% of the population which are part of the UK’s “Blossoming Families”.
What does that tell me about myself? I am not entirely sure. What does it tell anyone else? Apparently that I have a mortgage on my (semi-)detached house, own two or three powerful-engined or family cars, like to shop in Sainsbury’s, and am a reader of such newspapers as the Mail and the Express. Well, I feel vaguely offended by that. How does yours match?
Punter Southall are actuaries with a similar interest in numbers and selling their opinions on how to interpret them… and they are keen to estimate my time of death. Based on where I live rather than how I live!
Apparently I can expect to live 0.8 years less than the national average for a male. Which would be worrying if it was made at all clear what the national average life expectancy was.
The more data available to you, the harder it seems to be glean useful information from it.
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