For decades there has been something that's keeping tabs on you. It's called a persistent

identifier or PID. One way to think about them is it's like a social security number,

but one that is not assigned to you by the government but by a private company.

That's Mackenzie Funk, a reporter for ProPublica and the author of The Hankship. A book about

the man largely responsible for these shadow social security numbers, Hank Asher. Mackenzie

looked up one of his persistent identifiers, a Lex ID compiled by Lexus Nexus, one of

many companies stockpiling data on us. His Lex ID knew a lot about him, beyond the details

you'd find and say a credit report. The data even threw some shade his way.

After it performed my Ernie potential.

Ouch. Mackenzie's Lex ID took every bit of data it could find on him to paint a picture

of the man it thought he was. But it's not just Mackenzie, it's everyone.

You can see where they lived. You can see what kind of neighborhood that was. You can

see what college they went to and what jobs they had. They have all of your relatives.

Anyone could map your social network and see, okay, this person came from money. This

person had a lot of privilege in life. This person went to a pretty good college and in

case of my underperformance. Yeah, I grew up comfortably middle class. I went to a small

college and then I became a journalist. So there you have it. They could see where I've

lived. If I owned the house, what kind of cars I have, every job I've had, every opportunity

I've had.

And with all this data, these companies are able to map not just your past life, but what

your future might look like too. You can derive maybe a model of their health is based on

the neighborhoods the person has lived in. The air quality, the access to transportation,

...