My divorce is sort of final. We’ve agreed on terms, but the Judge needs to sign off on it. I’ve been living a nomadic lifestyle during this period adding nearly 200k points to my Air France frequent flyer account.

But that’s not really my point here. What is my point is that I am receiving notices for signing up for medicare at a place where I am not resident: other than visiting. My guess is that the data miners get my info since I tend to order things.

It’s annoying that the US doesn’t have strong data protection laws. I am protected by my EU residency, which manages to knock a lot of info out of their marketplace, but not enough.

Anyway, quite frankly, don’t trust the online background check vendors since there is no guarantee their information is correct.

Imagine my surprise when looking up some information on my Uncle, that I learned my father was living with him on a couple of these sites.

My father has been dead since 2010. That’s 12 years.

Not as long as the other dead person (roughly 40 years), but my father is still dead as far as I know.

Part of the reason I am off social media since they make most of their money selling your information. Same goes for Amazon.

The US needs strong data protection laws, but don’t expect that to happen as long as there is big money in selling your information.

Imagine my surprise when I see that the President of France talking about increasing the number of unicorns in France. Is it April First?

Nope, your French dictionary may be dated, but Antidote (https://www.antidote.info/en) came to the rescue:

économie – Jeune entreprise du domaine des nouvelles technologies qui, sans être cotée en Bourse, est estimée à plus de un milliard de dollars

That’s “Young company in the field of new technologies which, without being listed on the stock exchange, is estimated to be worth more than one billion dollars” in English. Not to mention this is a really good term since some of these companies really have zero assets.

Their real assets are YOUR INFORMATION which they sell.

Maybe some of these companies actually have a product, but they sell airware for the most part.

Here’s your unicorn.

This is a tangent from my post on data protection, but the Mormons have a couple of goofs in their Family Search database (https://wwwp.familysearch.org/). One was that my aunt was dead because of her age.

She isn’t.

The other is that my mother immigrated to the US from France in 1953 on the Queen Mary.

I wish! Since that would make things a lot easier for me post-Brexit. While my dad was the recent immigrant from Europe, any of his continental connections are tenuous. Short of being a Biden, I don’t stand a chance of getting Ukrainian citizenship. And there is no way in Hell I would want Ukrainian citizenship. First off, Ukraine isn’t a part of the EU. It probably won’t be too.

On the other hand, I would have no problem getting French citizenship if my mother was the one “fresh off the boat”. But my French ancestors came over in the early to mid 19th Century Think the time of Les Mis and you have the idea. Germany also doesn’t do citizenship through the maternal line, unless you’re Jewish and your family emigrated during the Third Reich. There’s another interesting story there. German citizenship isn’t high on my list, but I have seriously considered Polish and Portuguese. So….

My response to the “love it or leave it” crowd is that’s easier said than done. The States is a lot more lenient on people who are “lawfully present” than most countries. Most countries would fine the “unlawfully present” and stamp their travel documents to make life tough on them. The US welcomes them with open arms while making it hard for people who are trying to do things legally.

On the other hand, France makes it tough on both groups. Yes, French bureaucracy is as bad as they say it is.

Aren’t worth shit.

I’ve seen too many glaring errors in them with one really amazing one on Spokeo, where someone who has been dead since 1982 is listed as being 95 years old! Even the legit reports show that I lived at 232 K street SW, Washington, DC.

I am a real fucking badass if that is true (or black as the reports also say I am).

The problem in the US is that too many people believe that industry can police itself, which is a load of libertarian horseshit. That is the equivalent of foxes being in charge of henhouses. Self-regulation my arse!

Or maybe you really trust Facebook!

But nothing is being done about enacting serious data protection laws even with the Google, Facebook, etc. data scandals.

So, beware of bullshit.

And don’t believe those online background checks since 232 K st SW was the address of the person who stole my identity back in 1995. That has made its way on to my data sheet despite many years of trying to get that wiped off my record.

My reports have been yanked from the internet since I was so disgusted by how WRONG they were and not being able to fix it. I don’t trust those online background checks since I have seen too much WRONG information.

After all, the dead seem to live in the world of data mining.

BTW, note the disclaimer at the bottom of the Spokeo report. It’s sort of like they are admitting their reports aren’t accurate.