Aug 6, 2008

Chase SUCKS!

I just received another of the many Privacy Policy statements I get regularly. This one from Chase (JP Morgan Chase, previously Bank One). The cover letter includes these choice lines:

  • We want you to know what we're doing to protect your privacy.
  • Your privacy is important to us and,
  • protecting your personal information is one of our top priorities.

I decided to thoroughly read the enclosed privacy policy. Here are some highlights.

Information they collect includes:

  • All details we enter on any form for them,
  • Account transactions and balances,
  • for good measure, they get additional information from credit bureaus.

What they do with this information:

  • They share it within their "family of companies"
  • They share it with their "service providers"
  • They share it with companies which have "joint marketing agreements"
  • They share it with "non-financial companies" including auto dealers, auto makers, direct marketers, membership clubs and publishers.

What are my options regarding this sharing:

  • Nothing. Actually, they state that I can fill out some forms but that they might still share my information "as permitted by law" anyway!

Again, from the cover letter they claim that this communication is to tell me:

  • We want you to know what we're doing to protect your privacy.
  • Your privacy is important to us and,
  • protecting your personal information is one of our top priorities


At no point do they mention ANY INFORMATION they they will NOT give out to ANY ORGANIZATION willing to pay them for it.


An Observation

Living here in Chicago my whole life I would say that I have noticed media people, by chance, within a few feet of me at least 15 times. Mostly these are people in the news media and in one case a rather famous talk show host (her name starts with O).

Anyway, in nearly every single case where I noticed one of these people they were already looking directly at me when I first noticed them. For a weird split second I'm starring eye to eye with someone I'm used to seeing on television -- and nobody else is noticing. I tend to think that most other people wouldn't notice me even if I were wearing an ostrich plume hat.

I think this must be a characteristic of journalists (and I'm including one sportscaster). They have their eyes open and are looking at what's going on around them. They are looking at everyone, and my "encounters" occur only when I happen to notice them.