Online Surveys that share your information with the credit reporting agency Experian (or others).

I believe all of it is important in supporting my theory regarding companies using surveys with incentitives as a "sneaky" practice to collect personal information for use in ways they don't want you to know about. They cleverly disguise these practices through legal jardin on their privacy and about us pages, and even then the visitor must sometimes visit about 3 different websites to get the full picture about what they are agreeing to by simply joining a website. They (other companies & websites included) provide just enough information to be legal on each site.

I believe the thoughts process would suffer if this hub was broken down into several hubs.

If you read this hub, I believe I have provided valuable information that will help you to protect your personal information (including credit, spending, lifestyle, and behavior history) from being passed around to anyone with a website or business willing to "partner" with the likes of Vente Inc/ Experian.

I understand that it is a lot of information and you may find skimming over the various areas all that you need to read.

In a nutshell, among junk mail (both Postal Mail and Email), you could find yourself at the receiving end of a relentless and obnoxious collection agency whether the debt is yours or not.

It's hard to believe that simply signing up with a survey site giving them only your name, address, and email (even if your phone number or birthday are not required) can have your most PERSONAL & PRIVATE information that you didn't give to them propogating through the www from business to business ("partners" is the term they used) in a matter of hours!

I hope this helps someone realize the dangers of registering on ANY website without reading the fine print of the terms & conditions, privacy policies, and "about us" pages. I thought I was cautious enough before, but my eyes have definitely been opened by this today.

( Disclaimer: I am not condoning anyone who tries to get out of paying a debt that is truly theirs, but I have seen innocent people pay debts that some unscrupulous collection agency misled them into believing that they HAD to pay by threats, etc. They're not allowed to intimidate, threat, etc but unless they're caught in the act (legally taping the phone conversation, etc) then it's their word against the victims.) They can even end up with a collection account on their credit report that is not theirs simply because legal technicalities allow the processs if the victim doesn't "dispute" it and not everyone knows it's on their credit report until later when they go to apply for credit.

I am working on an article at www.pinkmingos.com that will go further in depth with supporting links and will update this hub when it's available. (The structure and outline of issues related to this topic will be the most difficult to layout so give me a little time to get it organized. I've worked in collections (not collection agencies, though I've had to work with them on some of the written off accounts of the Companies I have worked for) so researching the information will not take up a lot of time.

Online Surveys that share your information with the credit reporting agency Experian (or others).

I haven't quite decided if what I have discovered is a way for Credit Reporting Agencies such as Experian, to gather personal information for their databases, or if they've just come up with a plan for one off their "child companies" to earn revenue by creating a database of credit worthy leads to earn commission from affiliates.

Of course I suppose none of this would be illegal if they acknowledge this to you on the website. In this case, I would have to say that it was provided through a chain of links, with just enough information on each page you bounced off of in order to equip you with enough pieces of the puzzle that you could sit down and put it all together.

I personally feel it should be more straight to the point. The fact that someone with a college degree can fairly well comprehend their legal mumbo jumbo is not good enough. The information is vague to put it in a nice way, yet I can hear their lawyers now, explaining it in court, pointing out how it is clearly written in their privacy policies ... and unfortunately get out of the lawsuit. (REMINDER: ALWAYS read the fine print in a websites privacy policy and about us pages BEFORE entering any personal information).

So, either way you look at it, it's crooked and a front for devious practices. It reminds me of the police department that sent out "You've won a new TV" (or what ever the prize was) to the current addresses of the people in it's database with outstanding warrants. When the "winners" arrived at the police department to claim their prize, they were escorted into another room to select it (actually so that those sitting there waiting to claim their prize didn't see the earlier winner get slapped with handcuffs and their rights read to them).

This particular Survey Group appears to pretty much be doing something similar, although I'm sure at least some of their participants have not broken any laws.

I received an invitation to sign up at a website that is completely and totally interested in what I have to say. They don't know me, but they're interested in what "I" have to say!

I followed the link and ended up here: http://www.whatshehastosay.com/

Now, being the type of nosey little thing that I am, usually the first thing I do is at least skim over the privacy policy, terms & conditions, & about us. (Did you know that the privacy policy only needs to state that they may share your information with others and what you can do to ask them not to if you don't want your information shared? They don't have to go into detail about why they share and who they share it with, you would have to either request that, or research it yourself).

So anyway, I checked out the "about us" link ( http://www.whatshehastosay.com/aboutus.cfm?wfstrid=0&sipx=%2D1944726388&blank=0#18rules ) and guess what? They are owned and operated by Vente Inc. an EXPERIAN company! Yes, Experian, the Credit Reporting Agency.

The first line reads:

" WhatSheHasToSay.com is one of the family of websites owned and operated by Vente Inc., an Experian company. "

So I moved on to their "Privacy Policy" ( http://www.whatshehastosay.com/privacy.cfm?wfstrid=0&sipx=%2D1944726388&blank=0#18rules )

Which states at one point (I underlined, made bold, & italicized key parts for emphasis. The text is "plainly written on the respective website(s)):

" If you do not want us to share contact, postal, e-mail address and demographic information with third party marketers, we can add your name to our "do-not-share" list. "

Well, in my opinion, some people will not realize that "Experian" is really not considered a "third party" since they are part of this company, right? I mean they "OWN" this Vente Inc. company .... and what's mine is yours and your's is mine, etc in the legal world of companies & corporations.

But now, there's more. If the visitor has gotten this far, and then continues to read and scroll down much further, they will read this (again, I underlined, made bold, & italicized key parts for emphasis):

" In some cases, we may disclose your personal information with other third parties if we are required to do so by law or we in good faith believe that such action is necessary to: Comply with the law; Protect and defend our rights and property; Protect against misuse or unauthorized use of the Site and/or WhatSheHasToSay.com; or Protect the personal safety or property of our users or the public. "

So what this means is that regardless of whether it is the law to do it or not, if they have another "user" ("public" actually gives them blanket protection here, so in otherwords, Vente Inc can share your information with anyone they want if they feel in good faith that they should) that you owe money to and that customer is looking for you, they can share your current address, phone number etc with them. (They dont need your SSN for this, comparing personal information such as phone numbers, addresses, emails, etc is a well known practice of collection agencies called "skip tracing". Upon gaining this information, they send you a collection notice and note that you have 30 days to "dispute" the debt. Legal loop holes plain and simple).

By the notices they have provided in both the privacy policy and about us page on www.whatshehastosay.com, www.venteinc.com, and www.experian.com, collectively: Vente Inc being a part of Experian can basically do the following (not limited to just this either)

(An example might work best for my purpose here)

Vente Inc is apparently in the business off collecting information from people through surveys in order to find out their interest, such as cars, credit cards, banking, etc. They then send the survey member offers from their affiliates that are related to these interest the survey member has pointed out in a survey they've taken. This is apparent in their about us page under " Technical Expertise " and then " Analytics " (not to be confused with they limited info in your google Analytics software). Anyway, it states this:

" Whether it’s a client’s customer file or its own database, Vente uses past behavior, demographics and lifestyle variables to develop consumer models that predict future outcomes. For example, Vente can develop prospect models based upon best customer profiles to increase the ROI on acquisition campaigns both online and offline. "

I'm pretty sure the "technical cleansing of information" (see below) consist of checking at least Experian's database for anyone living at your address with your name, etc that has "worthy" enough credit to take advantage of their affiliates offer. I mean, why waste their time sending offers to people who are going to be automatic denials? Vente Inc doesn't have to request your credit report (though I'm sure they could through Experian). There is a thing called a "soft pull" in which companies are allowed to request mailing information from the Credit Reporting Agencies that meet their criteria. (Ex: the names of people who make $40K annually, and a score of 650 or higher and live in the North East region of the US..all of this hypothetical of course, but you get my drift). The Credit Reporting Agencies provide them with basically your name and mailing address in order for them to send you offers.

There's nothing wrong with them selecting only the "creme of the crop" to send their offers to.

The above " Special Disclosure Exceptions " paragraph though, would allow them to check Experian (since you are dealing with Experian when you deal with Vente Inc) to see if you owe anybody ("Public") anything in the way of "property" (Yes, a debt is considered "property").

Let's say that Vente finds that one of their "survey members" has a delinquent or collection entry on their Experian credit report for Capital One. What's to stop them from believing (in good faith, you understand) that they need to share your current address, phone number and what ever else you've supplied through www.whatshehastosay.com in one of their surveys to Capital One or their Collection Agency?

Trust me on this, I've done suveys before that asked the name of the company you work for or even the type of company, etc. and all they have to do is look up that company in your city or area to get your employer's information for garnishment, etc.

At the top of www.whatshehastosay.com 's about us page, in the "overview" section is the link to Vente Inc's website: http://www.venteinc.com/

So I clicked on it and took a look at their about us page: ( http://www.venteinc.com/aspx/content.aspx?pid=1&page=About_Us ).

Under " Technical Expertise " and then " Hygiene " it states:

" Vente employs a data cleansing process that includes real-time CASS™ processing, NCOA^Link™, phone append and validation, ECOA, DMA and a number of other proprietary verification and cleansing processes. "

CASS: This is a process for evaluating address-matching software used by those who have them. Basically it's saying that Vente Inc uses software to "match addresses" and it has been tested and evaluated by CASS a process the US Postal Services offers to evaluate a company's address matching software and then point out to them any cracks in it that would make it more accurate. (you can read more here: http://ribbs.usps.gov/psp/PSP/CSP/CASS.htm )

NCOALink: Another service provided by the US Postal Service that provides companies with change of addresses. Yep, you guessed it, for a fee, a business can lease, purchase, or develope software that will enable them to be notified of a change of address. If mail is returned to a business, they can use this software to find the change of address relating to the previous one that caused their mail to be returned. (you can read for your self here: http://www.usps.com/ncsc/addressservices/moveupdate/changeaddress.htm )

ECOA: Simply a term no one really owns, but stands for "Email Change of Address" and is software used to match new email addresses with one that are no longer valid. In other words, if you set up a new email for what ever reason, companies (who are inerested in you) will know both if you have forwarding put on the old email address (most internet providers will do this for you). Something else to consider: Most surveys and memberships of any kind require an "alternate" email address when you register with them. While this might be good for other reasons, in cases like this, it just arms them with more avenues to track you and your personal information.

DMA: Direct Marketing Association ?? It states at the bottom of their privacy policy page: " Vente is a member of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in good standing and endorses the guidelines established by the DMA. "(Maybe this: http://www.the-dma.org/index.php ). "... and endorses the guidelines established by the DMA" ..yet another set of guidelines to check out before joining www.whatshehastosay.com or any of the other survey sites Vente Inc owns which will be listed or your convenience at the end of this hub).

So for a "survey group" they sure do go to a lot of time, money, & trouble using advanced technology to keep track of you, don't they?

Of course their proclaimation at the top of their about us page (after acknowledging their connection with Experian) states:

" Vente Inc., an Experian company, is a leader in permission-based marketing. "

By "permission based" they mean that they have signed up a bunch of people who don't realize the extent of the permission they gave Vente Inc/Experian because they grew tired of following their "wild goose chase" of links from one site to another (if they even looked at any of the privacy policies or about us pages in the first place) and clicked the "I agree" button.

 http://www.surveynetworks.com, http://www.whatshehastosay.com, http://www.winmoolah.com, http://www.theconsumerbeat.com, http://www.winningsurveys.com, http://www.consumerexpressions.com, http://www.bigbucksurveys.com, http://www.surveysforfun.com, http://www.opinionnaire.com and http://www.opiniondirect.com.

(I'm not even going to read the privacy policies or about us pages on those sites, I'm simply going to block them in my email platform. I have nothing to hide from anyone who has a real "need" to keep track of me, but these types of organizations do not.)

 ( http://www.venteinc.com/aspx/content.aspx?pid=1&sid=4&page=About_Us_Privacy_Policy )

... has the following statements in addition to other information:

_^" Vente gathers personally identifiable and other information about users (such as name, postal address, email address, gender, date of birth, interests, other demographic information, etc.) from both internal and external marketing programs. This information is typically obtained from users who have voluntarily agreed to provide this information in connection with a user's registration in one of our survey or sweepstakes programs. _^"

So yeah, they get together with other people like themselves and "compare notes" on you, and do this with it:

" We and/or our marketing partners may enhance and/or merge personally identifiable information about users with data collected from other sources to use in direct and/or online marketing. In the event we enhance and/or merge such personally identifiable information with data collected from other sources, we will take reasonable steps to maintain the integrity and quality of that information. "

"Reasonable steps" by who's standards?