Amidst all the angst about loss of privacy in the modern age (a little amusing, considering what a modern invention privacy is), Declan McCullagh has an interesting article on the unsung good things about having your name in databases in this month's Reason (the one with the customized cover that shows an aerial view of the subscriber's neighborhood).

One part of the article puzzled me though:

MBNA grew to more than 51 million customers through its aggressive "affinity" program, which let a number of groups -- NASCAR, universities, the Atlanta Braves, and so on -- market credit cards imprinted with their own logos. Not counting its existing customers, in 2000 MBNA had a database of 800 million names of prospective cardholders provided by affinity groups, but it could afford to send only 400 million solicitations.

Writing in the Duke Law Journal in February 2003, Indiana law professor Fred Cate and Georgetown business professor Michael Staten described how MBNA winnowed its list down to an affordable size through aggressive information sharing. MBNA first looked at public records and then, by exchanging information with its affiliates, tried to evaluate the creditworthiness of the remaining names on the list. The remaining 400 million people received solicitations with the endorsement of the affinity group to which they belonged.

In what country did this take place? Is this worldwide? The population of the US is around three hundred million, last time I checked, and many of them are of insufficient age to be eligible for credit. Where did they come up with eight hundred million names?

Faced with this uncertainty, they did the only logical thing. They took 800 million, divided by 300 million and sent each of us 2.67 pieces of junk mail. Then narrowed the list down to 400 million, and sent us each 1.3 pieces. Then they repeated the cycle again the next week.

Actually, I wish they had divided the junk mail into pieces before they sent it. It would have saved me the trouble of tearing it up.

Well, I've gotten three different offers this way. Part of the confusion might also be that I use different middle initials for different magazines/memberships. (I don't have a middle name, either.)

One thing they don't make clear is that once you accept one offer, you can't accept the others. (You can, however, change your affinity.)

Maybe they're including Canada and Western Europe? Australia? Japan? (Actually, I don't know if there are 800 million adults in those areas combined, and don't have time to look it up.) How much credit card use is there in other countries, compared to ours?

There's also South and Central America (they have credit cards too).

Though I think this is just an example of marketing math. 800 million "names" probably means they have 800 million distinct leads that some item of information or other they are privy to indicates some combination of name and address (including PO Boxes, I'm certain) is a worthwhile enough candidate to send out an application. Considering how cheap it is to send out 400 million applications, the level of reliability on those indicators need not be great. Keep in mind that usually they have no way of actually pinpointing an identity until after they get the applications back (since beforehand they are unlikely to have SSNs and accurate info). It's certainly plausible that that 800 million contains a large number of duplicate entries of, say, merely 100 million actual individuals that the computer isn't able to distinguish (i.e. same person, old address, or PO Box, or office address, or different spelling of the name, or wrong address, or wrong name, etc.)

That may be what it is Robin, but the wording is misleading. "...800 million names of prospective cardholders..." reads to me like 800 million unique individuals.

Ditto the above comments. I work for a "Big Evil Bank" and I can confirm that the 800 million almost certainly includes many duplicates and that it likely includes international customers too.

Based upon my experience, if you are on any of these lists, there is NO WAY my BEB can remove you even if we wanted to (we don't). These lists aren't kept in a nice tidy central place, so we can remove you from Marketing list A when you call on the phone and ask, but somewhere (perhaps at our affiliates) you are on list B (which came from A, in part) and C and D ....

Your name and info has great value, and the BEBs harvest it. You can't duck this unless you live in a spider hole and don't put your info on anything.

Cheers

--Fred

I suspect that many of the "800 million" people don't exist.

The name on my return-address labels is made-up. I don't use that name in any other circumstance, yet it receives mail, including credit card solicitations, solicitations that I don't get. (And, I get lots of solicitations.)

I wonder what its credit rating is?