I would personally hate to have my info in their database.
This industry is so old I can’t remember the company’s name we used to buy leads from 50 years ago, around the time of the birth of the ARPANET, the precursor of today’s Internet. The only change is that data gathering is thousands of times more efficient.
https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/arpanet
Except it was not packaged as leads. One would buy dossiers on the companies one was interested in which was acquired through diverse means from physical canvasing to reading ads. We based our market study of the Venezuelan economy on a book by the title The Oligarchy of Money by a Communist economist. The companies he was demonizing were our prime market! Data is treasure!
We all have two kinds of data, public and private. As long as they are collecting public data I see no harm, on the contrary, we all seek to “sell” ourselves to get jobs or contracts and even life partners. What needs to be kept secure is our private data and there Amazon and Facebook are probably more dangerous.
Denny Schlesinger
went to IBM’s Sales School in Cuernavaca, Mexico in November 1963
Memory returns…
Dun and Bradstreet
History [edit]
1800s[edit]
Dun & Bradstreet traces its history back to July 20, 1841, with the formation of The Mercantile Agency in New York City by Lewis Tappan, later called R.G. Dun & Company.[7] Recognizing the need for a centralized credit reporting system, Tappan formed the company to create a network of correspondents who would provide reliable, objective credit information to subscribers.[8] As an advocate for civil rights, Tappan used his abolitionist connections to expand and update the company’s credit information.[9]
In spite of accusations of invading personal privacy, by 1844 the Mercantile Agency had over 280 clients. The agency continued to expand, allowing offices to open in Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. By 1849, Tappan retired, allowing Benjamin Douglass to take over the booming business.[10]
In 1859, Douglass transferred the company to Robert Graham Dun, who immediately changed the firm’s name to R.G. Dun & Company.[11] Over the next 40 years, Graham Dun continued to expand the business across international boundaries.