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> contact details, loyalty account information and additional personal details such as gender and birthdays I'm always wondering why a random service would nee
by jakub_g 7y ago
> contact details, loyalty account information and additional personal details such as gender and birthdays
I'm always wondering why a random service would need a date of birth (apart from validating "the person is an adult"). Some of them give you a special promo for your birthday, but I guess I can live without that.
Except banking & government services, I typically provide a fake one if required, because, WTF?
- gkoberger 7y agoI've never given my birthday or gender to a hotel, so my best guess is that they just have this info for some people but not most (rewards programs, perhaps?). It's possible they write it down when I give them my ID, but it seems like a lot of work for very little payoff.
- dave5104 7y agoSeems like having a birthday (and therefore age) for everyone checking into a hotel could be valuable for business intelligence and other analytics.
- gumby 7y agoIn the US it is common now to swipe the driver’s license in order to verify age, at places as varied as bars and nightclubs, liquor stores, general shops that also sell liquor, and such. All you need to prove is your age, but the company that puts the scanner in place (in the case of bars and restaurants) collects all the info on the DL. Walgreens collects all the info and correlates it with your CC if you don’t pay by cash. Etc. Any major hotel will simply swipe your DL and will populate the guest record with its info.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI’m not aware of any major hotel brand that swipes driver’s licenses yet in the US.
- jandrese 7y agoHuh? I don't think I've ever checked into a hotel and not been asked to hand over my driver's license so the clerk can punch in a bunch of info from it onto their machine. I assume it's to help them track you down if you cancel your credit card, trash the room, and flee.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoBut they don’t swipe it.
- gumby 7y agoThe last hotel I stayed in, a W, did it as I checked in. And hmm, just realised they’re owned by Marriott.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- onetimemanytime 7y agoGather as much as you can is their idea. It costs you nothing, but it may be valuable one day.
- rbanffy 7y agoUntil it becomes a liability under the GDPR...
- ntsplnkv2 7y agoI wonder if there will be a "data bubble" that will burst. I mean, I would imagine a TON of places have my birthday now. How valuable is that information really?
- zamadatix 7y agoWhats to burst, storage is dirt cheap and they get their tiny data breach fines (if any) whether or not they store the color of your second dogs favorite chew toy with the rest of the info.
- ntsplnkv2 7y agoBut that's exactly it - if it's so cheap, why is data so valuable?
- jandrese 7y agoStorage is cheap, collecting the data is expensive. I mean this company had to run a national chain of hotels to collect this data. That's not easy.
- ntsplnkv2 7y agoOkay, then collecting the data is expensive. Storage being cheap really doesn't matter. You can store tons of unstructured data but that data isn't valuable until it is structured which takes time and money.
- rbanffy 7y agoI often edit my birthday to coincide with my stays.
- saagarjha 7y agoHave you ever gotten perks out of it?
- harrisonjackson 7y agoYou could just travel on your bday :D
- sixstringtheory 7y agoBut why only do it once a year?
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoIt's because marketing teams like to send you emails on your birthday to "make you feel special", because apparently a lot of people can't see through this tactic.
- sneak 7y agoName + DOB to disambiguate are the lookup keys they pass to data brokers to identify you, given a government ID (required to check in to a hotel). It gives them access to things like address history, email address history (for crosslinking of account records), credit rating, marketing channel tags, et c. Same goes for the phone number that some website registrations demand. It's not to call you, it's to lookup your name and address and annual income.
- irrational 7y agoHuh, I chose a random date from the year before I was born and use it whenever sites ask for my birthday. I’ve never had one come back and say that isn’t really my birthday.
- TechBro8615 7y agoIt's not like they're checking in real time. There is some error rate in matching people via data brokers, so this trick just manifests itself in a lower cardinality of "enriched" profiles in their database.
- Scoundreller 7y agoAnd for Dairy Queen, I gave them a date in the summer. Getting coupons in the middle of winter isn't too useful!
- swiley 7y agoIt’s been a while since I checked in to a hotel but the only thing I remember giving them was my debit card. Maybe I’m just so used to being asked for my ID I didn’t notice.
- jariel 7y agoIt's mostly the YOB that's valuable; 'basic demographics' is a powerful tool. Full DOB can probably isolate you from other people with same name for other marketing purposes. They do have 'adult v child' stuff so they for sure have legit reasons for wanting to know in addition to sleazy reasons.
- TylerE 7y agoMy father and I both have the same first and last name, and same mailing address Our birthdays are two days apart. We use the same pharmacy. DOB (including year) is important!
- Ndymium 7y agoDon't they use personal ID number (e.g. SSN) to differentiate people? Or do you live in a place where you don't have those numbers?
- swiley 7y agoNot everyone in the US has an SSN.
- distances 7y agoSame name? Is that common where you live? That would be .. unconventional around here, to put it mildly.