The different segments mentioned in the article reminded me a LOT of what the Cozzano's campaign managers in Neal Stephenson's Interface [1] did when segmenting the population to target the campaign messages.
As a consumer, it's a bit terrifying how little control I have over this data. It sounds like they have deeply personal details on people who have absolutely no idea what has been collected and sold to marketers.
This is no different than what President's Organizing for America did:
The tool kit was custom-built for the 2012 Obama re-election campaign. It digitally linked data on millions of American voters, including their email addresses, through Dashboard as well as through social-media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, to an army of staff and volunteers knocking on doors in the key swing states.
As a consumer, it's a bit terrifying how little control I have over this data. It sounds like they have deeply personal details on people who have absolutely no idea what has been collected and sold to marketers.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(novel)