I have no proof of the suspicion Im about to set forth - but its viable and Id love some feedback. We all know the spyware, adware and cookies are mainly for the purposes of info gathering for targetted marketing, following is the first time I've heard of or had experience with such a close up and personal use of them (again, as of right now its merely a suspicion).
So I see a commercial on T.V. adverting a website - classinPJs.com and since I have been wanting to go back to school and have been considering online classes I log on fill out the questionaire and get 2 schools referred to me - Kaplan U. and South U. this was last week. So yesterday Im on my way out the door to the gym and Kaplan calls, I had gotten a few emails and was planning on calling them when I got back anyways, so I tell the girl Im on the way out the door and will call back at 1pm, I DID NOT mention where I was going to (this is important to remember for later).
So I call back and we talk biz for about 1/2 hour, and then this girl just starts gabbing on and on and we're just conversing personal like, and she just brings up that she likes to go to the gym, stay fit, and couldn't live without fitness and in fact she was thinking about going back to school for it next year (at Kaplan of all places). She says she needs to get off the school phone but she wanted to call me on her lunch break from her cell phone - which she does, and we chat for about another 45 minutes and since it seems like we're both into fitness we exchange photos via our cell phones.
I went along with it but started to get suspicious. We made plans later that night to talk and I told myself that I would tease her a bit about how many other guys she's tried to pick up that way - so I get online and start researching Kaplan U. - didn't find much good about it - from students nor ex-employees, some good but not much.
I have used firefox's find feature b4 but never which such pleasing results - I was on a site with many (over 100) comments about Kaplan and was looking for something specific so I searched "admissions advisor" and BAM back in 2007 a girl made a post that her advisor went so far as to want to exchange photos - which doesn't in itself prove anything since guys are probably more likely to try this than females. but in my head my suspicion was starting to be confirmed.
Then I started thinking - hmmm, she was really good at making it seem like we were just hitting it off, and how did she know to start talking to me about the gym and fitness??
and like a bitch-slap to a dumb kid it hit me ... I buy my supplements online and I bet Kaplan has either accessed or bought this info. from a data broker and referred it to this admin advisor.
Is this a feasible assumption? Regardless, I won't be attending Kaplan.
This is a very personal approach to the use of data mining is it not? Has anyone else similar stories?
I've never even considered it going that far, I always thought it was just for the targetted adverting. But this borders (if my suspicion is correct) on grimey!
