Junk mail creepiness factor 100

[HCHTech]

I got an offer in the mail today to sign up with a new carrier for homeowner's insurance. The envelope had a screened background that was a picture.....of my house. Scribble font for the address so the less-cynical might think it was hand-written. The single page inside had full picture of the house, it's current value from the county tax website, and some smiling doofus from Allstate. This is the most 'Minority Report' I've ever felt.

I hope:

• That cost them a lot of money to get the data and to print those full-color packages
• Smiling doofus guy has a bad enough year to make him quit the business
• Allstate's stock price tanks because some consumer-oriented reporter somewhere does a piece that gets picked up by Reuters. Oh, wait.....checks notes....No, still hope it tanks, even though I have a bunch of money in the S&P Index Fund.

 

[britechguy]

It's very simple to get all of those parts and put them together programmatically. Personalized advertising sells (and I don't like it any more than you do), and this sort of thing is not surprising to me at all.

Google Street View is a treasure trove of images of specific street addresses and public records are eaasy to cull, too.