Originally Posted by jsloan (Post 31772270)

It doesn’t matter.

The combination of gender, date of birth, and billing address ZIP code is nearly unique. (Assume a 60 year age range for MP members, and male/female only, to be conservative: 60 * 2 * 365 = 43,800. The largest ZIP code in the country has just over 115K residents, so an average of ~2.5. The average population of a ZIP code is less than 8,000.

If UA (or any other company) wants to identify an individual with a high degree of certainty, they don’t need as much information as one might think.

Originally Posted by bart889 (Post 31772413)

I briefly dated a woman who was banned for life from AA. Something about too much booze and a fistfight with an FA. Luckily for her, she was based out of ORD, so she switched to UA to keep her traveling sales rep career alive.

Originally Posted by tom911 (Post 31772262)

You might see some clues in THIS POST.

Originally Posted by zombietooth (Post 31772607)

Another blog implied that he currently has a MP account, or is this incorrect?

Originally Posted by zombietooth (Post 31772607)

How did he get reinstated with MP?--Another blog implied that he currently has a MP account, or is this incorrect?

Some stories claim he stole "tens of thousands", others say less. Does anyone know the real extent of his malfeasance?

Originally Posted by ctownflyer (Post 31772762)

Link?

Originally Posted by cesco.g (Post 31772777)

From his most recent UA trip report:

"I pride myself in the independence of my reviews, and that includes doing everything in my power to “fly under the radar.” However, in this case I had contacted United in advance to ask if I could board early."

So, at least he seems to still cultivate some kind of relation with UA ....

Originally Posted by ctownflyer (Post 31772894)

What does this have anything to do with MileagePlus :confused:

Just because MP doesn't want him doesn't mean UA PR is going to turn down free publicity.

Originally Posted by cesco.g (Post 31772777)

From his most recent UA trip report:

"I pride myself in the independence of my reviews, and that includes doing everything in my power to “fly under the radar.” However, in this case I had contacted United in advance to ask if I could board early."

So, at least he seems to still cultivate some kind of relation with UA ....

Originally Posted by jsloan (Post 31772270)

It doesn’t matter.

The combination of gender, date of birth, and billing address ZIP code is nearly unique. (Assume a 60 year age range for MP members, and male/female only, to be conservative: 60 * 2 * 365 = 43,800. The largest ZIP code in the country has just over 115K residents, so an average of ~2.5. The average population of a ZIP code is less than 8,000.

If UA (or any other company) wants to identify an individual with a high degree of certainty, they don’t need as much information as one might think.

Originally Posted by zombietooth (Post 31772607)

How did he get reinstated with MP?--Another blog implied that he currently has a MP account, or is this incorrect?

Originally Posted by ctownflyer (Post 31772894)

What does this have anything to do with MileagePlus :confused:

Originally Posted by ani90 (Post 31772906)

I am even more puzzled as to what all this lucky business has to do with the subject of this thread.

Originally Posted by fumje (Post 31772932)

I'm actually not sure what the question is.

If it pertains to identifying whether or not one individual is managing multiple MP accounts, a VPN can potentially obscure the answer to that question.

If it pertains to identifying whether or not someone who has been banned is attempting to fly under guise, then yes the required personal data points are too many to go unnoticed. Name and DOB are in almost all cases enough for that.

Originally Posted by bart889 (Post 31772413)

I briefly dated a woman who was banned for life from AA. Something about too much booze and a fistfight with an FA. Luckily for her, she was based out of ORD, so she switched to UA to keep her traveling sales rep career alive.

Originally Posted by ekwang (Post 31765697)

If United wanted to really go down the anti-fraud road, they would simply run all traffic through a geo-iIP service provider like Neustar or Digital Element and they would identify source, network, A/S number and more about all inbound IP traffic. Assuming United wants to do this, of course.

Originally Posted by mozilla (Post 31774582)

UA's website is behind Akamai's CDN, and UA has configured it so that it filters out many of the publicly available VPN IP ranges. Ironically, as those who travel INTL may testify, the IP's that belong to some busy *G/*A business lounges are also actively being filtered.

Corporate VPN's usually get through, especially when you connect to an on-site corporate router or firewall and get an IP of your corporate netblock.

Akamai can definitely already provide all this information.