Customer data from dealer websites and 3rd party vendors being sold??

[Caleb Twito]

I would say it's a grey area. Definitely legal because of the fine print but not something I would want to be involved in...

 

[Todd Caputo]

Advocate.

Does it matter? Our personal digital lives are so exposed already. We have ZERO control over that. Outside of upholding PPI, why should we even care if our businesses' (assumed anonymized) data is being used? Can we assume it is being used to make our experiences better within those products or that it is helping to fund those products so that our direct costs aren't rising? Are we just mad because we have direct costs and think we can bully these companies around?

</fuel thrown on fire>

I think it matters because dealers are paying 3-4 times and getting ripped off. We pay for a website from a vendor. We pay to drive traffic to the website with traditional and digital budgets. We pay for 3rd party websites which would not exist without dealer inventory. We then pay some of those same companies for SEM/PPC...they take the user info from traffic that dealers spent money on to drive traffic to those websites and sell the info back again to others (competitors) and then even back to us.

 

[Alex Snyder]

I think it matters because dealers are paying 3-4 times and getting ripped off. We pay for a website from a vendor. We pay to drive traffic to the website with traditional and digital budgets. We pay for 3rd party websites which would not exist without dealer inventory. We then pay some of those same companies for SEM/PPC...they take the user info from traffic that dealers spent money on to drive traffic to those websites and sell the info back again to others (competitors) and then even back to us.

Who is worse:

1) Marketing companies like SEM, Display, and Website companies or 2) DMS companies?

 

[craigh]

Who is worse:

1) Marketing companies like SEM, Display, and Website companies or 2) DMS companies?

Yes

 

[Bruce Hartz]

Sharing or stealing data is not going to stop, focus on the things you can change and don't waste time on things you can't change.
Jeffery Tongnetti from DealerX has been educating dealers about this for many years and its an eye opener as to the extent and sophistication of these data miners.
What you can change is the amount of third-party data miners that your website providers allow to access YOUR SHOPPERS & PPC data.
Start policing your site and Install the add-on Ghosterly to your Chrome browser and run a scan on your site and you will be shocked at the amount of third-party data miners that your site providers are giving/selling access to your site's data.
What we are discussing here is just the tip of the iceberg!

 

[Alexander Lau]

Todd was on this, before... https://forum.dealerrefresh.com/threads/busted-spincar-caught-selling-dealer-data.5914/