Permanent Record is straight from Big Brother

Last night my friend James pointed me to this site, permanentrecord.com, and its actually really scary. Culling bank records, magazine subscriptions and other public information, this thing is literally a directory of almost everyone in America, with detailed demographic information and "guesses" about certain personality traits, even religion. The site is simple enough that anyone could use it. Even though its captcha protected, I don't feel any more comfortable about it.

I searched for the obvious: my name, my family's names, my friends--it had nearly all of them in its database. Not all of the info is correct, but it could potentially be enough to steal someone's identity. Here's part of the site's official statement:

Your bank. Your cell phone provider. Your water company. Your government. Your gas station. Where you buy your music. Where you buy your frozen dinners. That timeshare pitch you suffered through a while back. Pretty much every organization you can name. And a few you probably can't.

Amazingly, everything you see here is stuff that other people make public about you, right or wrong. A lot of it can be found with just a few minutes with Google. We bring it all together for you to see. We're going to shake things up a bit.

See, they've been selling your information to each other for years. It's a big industry. So fine, at least now *you* can see what they think they know about you. Of course, invariably some portion of it is wrong, so don't take this too seriously. But like it or not (and who would?) this stuff is part of your Permanent Record because this is what thousands of people and companies use to classify you. Shame, isn't it?