E-scores are a new frontier in predictive consumer analysis

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Do you know what your e-score is? Do you even know what an e-score is?

As computing has gotten cheaper and more powerful, it’s now possible for shadowy companies to build a dossier on you and then peddle that info to the banking industry, insurance companies, cable companies and more.

The New York Times reports that e-scores can determine what kind of special offers are made to you, what kind are never made to you, and even whether you speak to a high-ranking customer service agent at a company or get brushed off to an outsourced call center.

Your e-score reportedly contains details on occupation, salary, home value, disposable income for luxury goods and more.

As a consumer, you don’t know who is compiling these dossiers. You can’t see your dossier like you can a credit report. So you have all these decisions being made about you in secret on the basis of info that may or may not be accurate — with no recourse to challenge it, unlike with a credit report.

For those who are particularly concerned about Big Brother, you’d likely have to be a survivalist and never surf the web or do anything as part of modern electronic culture if you really wanted to avoid having an e-score compiled on you.

I read a story about a woman who worked in Silicon Valley and quit her job and decided to take herself off the grid by moving to an obscure West Texas town. That’s the kind of extreme behavior it would require in today’s modern society to avoid having an e-score dossier.

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