Reply to post: Re: Bank Accounts

In a time before calculators, going the extra mile at work sometimes didn't add up

jake Silver badge

Re: Bank Accounts

45ish years ago, my brother bought a house in Ukiah, California. When they connected the telephone, he was surprised to discover that it was the same number as the prior owner ... something about limited numbers at the exchange. He still gets calls for that family occasionally ... and snail-mail. He takes a message on the phone calls and passes them along as a courtesy (they are friends), and uses the junk snailmail as fire starter. Xmas cards, wedding announcements/invites and the like get forwarded. Yes, after 45ish years. It would seem that some people who supposedly know the former owner STILL haven't updated their address book.

That's from the old, unconnected world.

Kind of makes me wonder how long the data that metaface, alphagoo, redmond, cupertino, amazon, etc.collect on everybody and everything that they can is going to be valid (and sellable), especially after a fair percentage of it becomes staler than last month's bread. Methinks a good deal of it is already quite stale ... What's the critical percentage of stale to valid before it's useless? Or do marketing "geniuses" care about that kind of thing?

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