| I only have one facebook page, so I can be friends with my niece, and
| it has no information on it, not even my real name.
|

You shouldn't talk about that. Mark Zuckerberg
and his sidekicks are trying to crack down on
pseudonym pages. They don't want you to have
privacy. They want to optimize what they can
charge for ads on your page, and for that they
need to know all about you and your friends. If
they figure out you're using a pseudonym they'll
close your page.
(There was an interesting story awhile back about
people who lost their Facebook pages because
they had odd names that sounded like they might
be fake.)

Some time ago I came across a truly chilling quote
from Cheryl Sandberg, the Facebook "COO". It's
interesting in that it shows just how far these people
have strayed from basic honesty and integrity...
apparently without even realizing it. She said that
Facebook "enables brands to find their voices. and to
have genuine, personal relationships with their
customers" ... "to make marketing truly social".

She's calling advertisers and their clients your friends!
That's what Zuck is talking about when he says he
wants to connect the whole world. It's reminiscent of
the old Twilight Zone episode (or was it Outer Limits?)
about the nice aliens who land and demonstrate their
good intentions with a book called "How to Serve Humans".
A scientist figures out, only after it's too late, that it's
a cookbook.

| Can you go to your DMV and give them someone's name and
| address and find out what car they own now and owned 11 years ago? I
| dont' think so. So if you can't do it, why can they?
|
I don't know. I suspect there's a difference between
an individual, with unknown intentions, and a private
investigator, bank, or insurance company when it comes
to getting such info.

But the real change is computerization. The info is all
in databases where it used to be on paper, in file cabinets.
Digitization means nearly all data is easy to access,
analyze and cross reference. That's a profound change.
Your car insurance company knows your car model and
driving record. There's no reason to assume they haven't
sold that data. The DMV (Registry of Motor Vehicles in my
neck of the woods) may also make their records available
to dataminers. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that
those records are being sold. ("Hey, do you wanna sell data
or do you want higher taxes?")
CVS now sells your personal medical info to drug companies
for marketing purposes, if you buy any drugs from CVS. Your
doctor can't legally do that, but there's no law about CVS
selling their business records. Privacy regulations, which were
never important before computers, simply haven't caught
up. And they may not, given the power of lobbyists. Selling
data and targetting ads is already a massive industry. If
you think of CVS and imagine how many similar cases there
may be, there's a good chance that companies like
LexisNexis know more about you than you do... far more.
Their memory is perfect.