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Delta and new DL.com Profiles A Lot About You

Old Jun 12, 2013, 7:24 pm
FlyerTalk Forums Expert How-Tos and Guides
Last edit by: Schmoops
Figured a highly collaborative effort like this needs a wikipost. As items and codes are confirmed, let's centralize them in one place rather than thumb through hundreds of discussion posts.

How to pull your information
Log into your SkyMiles account at Delta.com, then visit this link: https://www.delta.com/databroker/bcdata.action

What the items indicate
v01: Closest airport to home address (encoded using key 1)
v02: Country of residence
v03:
v04: Preferred departure airport/city (encoded using key 2)
v05: Language
v06: discSpndngAmt, in thousands
v07: Skymiles status level
v08: State/province (encoded using key 2)
v09: Pay with Miles eligible
v10: sunTrstInd
v11: prefDestCity
v12: MQS
v13: Hotel loyalty programs stored in DL.com profile (encoded using key 2, see post #829)
v14:
v15: Income, in thousands
v16: Current age + 99
v17: 1/2/3 MM Status
v18: Home value, in thousands
v19:
v20: SkyClub member
v21: SkyMiles account number
v22: Experian Mosaic segment (encoded using keys 1 and 3, see http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...l#post20913445) Description here and Segment Details here
v23: Saved search destination airports (encoded using key 1)
v24: SkyClub renewal date (coded using key 3)
v25: Saved payment information (encoded using key 1) AND SPG status (encoded using key 1, see http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...l#post20913463)
v26: Gender/prefix (1=male/Mr, 2=female/Ms/Mrs, 3=Dr/other) (to be confirmed)
v27:
v28: SkyMiles account number with 3 leading zeros (called "CustID" in previous data)
v29: Logged in (SM account)
v30: Customer Value Score (Questionable, and scale is unknown)
v31: RDM balance
v32: Dream trips from DL.com profile (encoded using key 2)
v33: MQM balance
v34: Activities & Interests from DL.com profile
v35:
v36:
v37:
v38:
v39: ?? Duplicate for Language ??
v40: ?? Duplicate for Country of Residence ??

Encoding

Three different coding keys are used for variables 01, 04, 08, 13, 22, 23, 24, 25, and 32. For full mappings, click here: Keys 1, 2, and 3
Print Wikipost

Delta and new DL.com Profiles A Lot About You

Old Jan 26, 2013, 10:23 am
  #466  
 
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Originally Posted by CJKatl
Yes. For the past twelve years I've worked for two of the five largest companies on the planet. If I remember correctly, you work for a family business.

One of the documents linked in this thread reminded cs employees to keep using the codes, which is what leads me to believe they were using the codes. The woman who wrote the article was a DL bigwig who was also an attorney. The link is towards the start of this thread.
Just little old me...

Originally Posted by reft
Welcome to the new Millennium. (We have cookies....and we know your FICO score.)
Originally Posted by PRWeezer
^
What she said.
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 10:23 am
  #467  
c_d
 
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I can still remember the issues and the mistreatment from DL just after the EU passenger rights were activated. Over time and partially through directly involving AF+KLM, it has gotten better.

However, IMHO they'll use those profiles for implementing/supporting their customer valuation programs (such as MQD or a "score card" for dealing with IROPS) in which non-U.S. fliers are once more being displayed as the worst of the bottom feeders. From what I could see in the brief moment of having the data displayed, they only counted the U.S. spend (charged to an U.S. credit card) but did not include any spending on other cards. They take a foreign post code and match it as closely as possible to an U.S. postcode. In other words: why country code is displayed as DE and the state as NY. They assume me being located somewhere in upstate NY but it's a foreign post code ... income for me is stated as "8". Spend is a little over 14k, which pretty much reflects the a/i costs of all flights originating in the U.S. in 2012.

I am with mnredfox here, let's see whether we receive a different treatment from DL in the foreseeable future because when most of the data is missing we just appear like customers not worth pursuing anymore to the untrained customer representative eye. Do we really and honestly think that a big red warning window magically appears on the rep's screen saying: "ATTN: NON-U.S. CUSTOMER, IGNORE INCOMPLETE PROFILING DATA AND TREAT AS GOOD PAX"?
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 10:28 am
  #468  
 
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Originally Posted by RRDD
http://www.linkedin.com/in/smitapremkumar

Here's Big Brother's Linked-In profile.

".... right offer to the right customer at the right time ..."
If she has a keen interest in customer behavior I bet she has an enhanced/paid LinkedIn account that will show her who has viewed her profile. If so I bet she's quite curious today.
PRWeezer is offline  
Old Jan 26, 2013, 10:33 am
  #469  
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
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Originally Posted by l'etoile
Clearly they developed a model about who lives in a specific community, but I don't think it's rocket science. On our own each of us could probably pick a community and come up with some spot-on observations. People in high-wealth communities read news, vote, participate in the arts, value education, travel more, buy european cars, etc. Package it pretty and - viola!

I guess I'm saying it fits, but they only know me in a broad sense.
I do think that there's more to it than just zip-code though. Yes, that's a big part of it, but experian has access to much more fine-grained data. Experian claims "Experian Marketing Services Mosaic USA is a household-based consumer lifestyle segmentation system that classifies all U.S. households and neighborhoods into 71 unique segments and 19 overarching groups" and claims to identify 98 percent of households.

People seem to jump from "My address is listed as my parents' and I get their classification, so the system must be zip-code based" which seems like an enormous leap of logic to me vs. at least considering the alternative of there being at least some household-based component. Experian explicitly claims that household-level data is available - I'm not sure there's compelling evidence to doubt them on this.

If you have rich parents and want Delta to think you're American Royalty, set your address to theirs...

My personal experience: as an under-35 couple my wife and I were tagged with a code representing 90% under 35 in a neighborhood that is roughly 90% 45+ and mostly 50+. The code they tagged is a reasonable fit for the few people of our age in the area, but there are all of 2 or maybe 3 households nearby (including ours) that fit that mold. Either Experian did an epically poor job of stereotyping our neighborhood or zip code, or the results are much more fine-grained than that.
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 10:37 am
  #470  
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
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Programs: AA EXP, DL PM (FO soon), A3 Gold, TK Classic Plus, SPG Plat, HH Gold, Hyatt Diamond, National EE
Posts: 1,003
Originally Posted by c_d
I can still remember the issues and the mistreatment from DL just after the EU passenger rights were activated. Over time and partially through directly involving AF+KLM, it has gotten better.

However, IMHO they'll use those profiles for implementing/supporting their customer valuation programs (such as MQD or a "score card" for dealing with IROPS) in which non-U.S. fliers are once more being displayed as the worst of the bottom feeders. From what I could see in the brief moment of having the data displayed, they only counted the U.S. spend (charged to an U.S. credit card) but did not include any spending on other cards. They take a foreign post code and match it as closely as possible to an U.S. postcode. In other words: why country code is displayed as DE and the state as NY. They assume me being located somewhere in upstate NY but it's a foreign post code ... income for me is stated as "8". Spend is a little over 14k, which pretty much reflects the a/i costs of all flights originating in the U.S. in 2012.

I am with mnredfox here, let's see whether we receive a different treatment from DL in the foreseeable future because when most of the data is missing we just appear like customers not worth pursuing anymore to the untrained customer representative eye. Do we really and honestly think that a big red warning window magically appears on the rep's screen saying: "ATTN: NON-U.S. CUSTOMER, IGNORE INCOMPLETE PROFILING DATA AND TREAT AS GOOD PAX"?
Presumably the customer value score takes care of that last bit, and if it doesn't then they've decided they don't value you. Maybe mindset comes in to play. Is the "untrained customer representative" going to be looking directly at the profile, or at an output such as those?
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 10:40 am
  #471  
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Maybe it worked for you, but for me much of my data is wrong or missing. My experian classification seems to reflect the zip code, as it even contradicts the information they do have on me, such as my birthdate.
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 10:41 am
  #472  
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Originally Posted by mattsteg
Presumably the customer value score takes care of that last bit, and if it doesn't then they've decided they don't value you. Maybe mindset comes in to play. Is the "untrained customer representative" going to be looking directly at the profile, or at an output such as those?
We really need to decode mindset. Anyone?
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 10:46 am
  #473  
 
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Originally Posted by MSPeconomist
Maybe it worked for you, but for me much of my data is wrong or missing. My experian classification seems to reflect the zip code, as it even contradicts the information they do have on me, such as my birthdate.
My guess is that they may fall back to zip if they are missing something or something doesn't add up. Also, the birthdate might be pulling from a different source than the mosaic data - probably what you entered in DL.com. The mosaic data is pulled by your address, I suspect. Data that delta collects is not necessarily used as an input to get the mosaic code.
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 10:51 am
  #474  
 
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Posts: 2,284
Originally Posted by jtrue28
If you lie about your birthdate or income level, how the hell would they know, they're just using a data feed.
You may only lie for so long though. In the past year I've had two 'data challenges' come up that was verifying data over 20 years old, in some cases. If you want to see an example, try signing up for a Walgreens account online. They even wanted me to do a data challenge on my sister's name.

This kind of data is extremely valuable, since it now becomes consumer-verified data which includes your e-mail address.

Originally Posted by CBS9000
You can see what google thinks of you here: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/view
Mine is blank, thanks to Ghostery. ^
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 10:57 am
  #475  
 
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Originally Posted by BER Flyer
Well said but that seems mostly an US problem. Here in europe most ( if not all ) countries have much stricter privacy laws then the US. In Germany for example hell would freeze over when an airine would use my yearly total income figure ( when not submmitted by me of course ) for marketing purposes.
The much more interesting question if DL is selling your data to "interested" other parties as the most profit in these databases is made beselling customized data sets.
\

You can bet the Brandenburger Tor that DL is selling this data to other vendors, like hotels, car rental agencies, tour operators, etc, etc.
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 11:09 am
  #476  
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Originally Posted by BER Flyer
Well said but that seems mostly an US problem. Here in europe most ( if not all ) countries have much stricter privacy laws then the US. In Germany for example hell would freeze over when an airine would use my yearly total income figure ( when not submmitted by me of course ) for marketing purposes.
The much more interesting question if DL is selling your data to "interested" other parties as the most profit in these databases is made beselling customized data sets.
You are talking about Europe where consumers actually are fairly protected. The US is governed by megacorporations. Big difference.
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 11:55 am
  #477  
 
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I just wanted to give a quick thank you to all the people who have PMed me data (or listed it in this thread) for me to add to my earlier lists. Unfortunately, work has kept me away from the internet since Thursday night, and of course now the thread is too massive to undertake another update!

My personal take: I'm not surprised they're attempting to profile me, and I don't really care. I just found it interesting to see the spectrum of data available and try to solve the "puzzle" of how some of the less transparent outputs fit together. At the end of the day, as long as I'm satisfied with what I'm getting from DL, I don't much care what they think of me.
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 12:38 pm
  #478  
 
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Originally Posted by DeltaFan4Now
Certainly I inderstand the value in that, but why did they need to transfer it from Delta.com to the customer's computer? Couldn't all of that be handled opaquely from the delta.com side? Incompetent programming or something important but less obvious?
What you call "opaque" handling is "traditional" web design -- each time you click on a link, you wait a few seconds while your browser talks to a server, the server generates a new page from scratch, the page transfers over the internet, and your browser renders it. Not the fastest of operations.

What Delta is doing is very, very, very, very common, and is how pretty much every modern web site operates. The server delivers the initial page to your web browser. However, when you click on many (but not all) links, your browser only requests a small bit of information from the server (in this case, the json file with all your demographic information), and only re-renders the portion of the page that needs updating. This is much faster and more responsive to the user.

You can see this on the main delta.com page. When you click "My Trips" and you get the spinning thing before your next trip renders, that's what's happening. Compare vs some other link where the entire page refreshes.

Technically, there's nothing "unsafe" happening here, no matter how freaked out people are in seeing their data. Privacy issues (including sharing this data with corporate partners) are another topic.
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 1:19 pm
  #479  
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
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Originally Posted by bennos
What you call "opaque" handling is "traditional" web design -- each time you click on a link, you wait a few seconds while your browser talks to a server, the server generates a new page from scratch, the page transfers over the internet, and your browser renders it. Not the fastest of operations.

What Delta is doing is very, very, very, very common, and is how pretty much every modern web site operates. The server delivers the initial page to your web browser. However, when you click on many (but not all) links, your browser only requests a small bit of information from the server (in this case, the json file with all your demographic information), and only re-renders the portion of the page that needs updating. This is much faster and more responsive to the user.

You can see this on the main delta.com page. When you click "My Trips" and you get the spinning thing before your next trip renders, that's what's happening. Compare vs some other link where the entire page refreshes.

Technically, there's nothing "unsafe" happening here, no matter how freaked out people are in seeing their data. Privacy issues (including sharing this data with corporate partners) are another topic.
It's not that Delta has my (guessitmated) home value in their database, but there is no reason I can see that it would be needed on the client (browser) except to send to a third party (for marketing, adds, whatnot). If DL is making a decision about something and the home value (and some of the other pieces of data) is relevant -- say searching for vacation packages -- there is no reason they can't do that on the back side (server). The stuff that is related to DL (mqms, sky club, etc) OK, fine -- I can see that might make the website respond faster (fewer "calls home").

DOB is a grey area -- since it is needed if you buy a ticket but there is no reason they couldn't pre-fill that field the same way they do name, credit card info and so on.

I am sure they are sending this info to a third party website.
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Old Jan 26, 2013, 1:23 pm
  #480  
 
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Originally Posted by Deltahater
\

You can bet the Brandenburger Tor that DL is selling this data to other vendors, like hotels, car rental agencies, tour operators, etc, etc.
No they don't.
We do not sell your name or other personally identifiable information to third parties, and do not intend to do so in the future. We routinely share your information with our SkyMiles Partners and Promotional Partners and our subsidiaries including Delta Connection Carriers.
It's doubtful that DL would publish this policy and then do something else.
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