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By EMILY STEEL and JULIA ANGWIN
You may not know a company called [x+1] Inc., but it may well know a lot about you.
From a single click on a web site, [x+1] correctly identified Carrie Isaac as a young Colorado Springs parent who lives on about $50,000 a year, shops at Wal-Mart and rents kids' videos. The company deduced that Paul Boulifard, a Nashville architect, is childless, likes to travel and buys used cars. And [x+1] determined that Thomas Burney, a Colorado building contractor, is a skier with a college degree and looks like he has good credit.
The company didn't get every detail correct. But its ability to make snap assessments of individuals is accurate enough that Capital One Financial Corp. uses [x+1]'s calculations to instantly decide which credit cards to show first-time visitors to its website.
In short: Websites are gaining the ability to decide whether or not you'd be a good customer, before you tell them a single thing about yourself.
( Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal Online )
Geeky-me who inhales cyberpunk on the regular saw this coming. Which is probably why Lives-in-the-real-world me has been trying to avoid it like a Johnny Mnemonic avoids black ICE.
You may not know a company called [x+1] Inc., but it may well know a lot about you.
From a single click on a web site, [x+1] correctly identified Carrie Isaac as a young Colorado Springs parent who lives on about $50,000 a year, shops at Wal-Mart and rents kids' videos. The company deduced that Paul Boulifard, a Nashville architect, is childless, likes to travel and buys used cars. And [x+1] determined that Thomas Burney, a Colorado building contractor, is a skier with a college degree and looks like he has good credit.
The company didn't get every detail correct. But its ability to make snap assessments of individuals is accurate enough that Capital One Financial Corp. uses [x+1]'s calculations to instantly decide which credit cards to show first-time visitors to its website.
In short: Websites are gaining the ability to decide whether or not you'd be a good customer, before you tell them a single thing about yourself.
( Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal Online )
Geeky-me who inhales cyberpunk on the regular saw this coming. Which is probably why Lives-in-the-real-world me has been trying to avoid it like a Johnny Mnemonic avoids black ICE.
