Which tells me how serious you really are about your privacy. You have made a decision here about how much trouble privacy is worth to you, which is "not much."
If I were single, it would be a lot easier to just start making up names and living under assumed aliases.. but with a wife and two kids, I have to follow the rules a bit more.. My privacy is worth variable amounts depending on who has access to it.. I certainly do not care if anyone on this list knows who I am or not, as it is something I voluntarily chose to join. Selling info about me, without notifying me before hand is another situation altogether. Even the magazines I subscribe to have notices that my name may be sold.. and the mags that don't have such a warning, but sell my name anyways, get cancelled as soon as I discover it. Far easier to stop by the local PC store and buy it a week later than to have mounds of junk mail piling up.
I hear people bitch about privacy endlessly. Privacy helps those who help themselves to privacy. I think Mr. May was precisely correct in saying that it is so much easier and simpler for one to rely on self privacy insurance rather than government privacy insurance.
Again, you both are correct, and perhaps I was overstating my position in regards to the TRW/etc. groups.. I have a tendancy to do so. Each of us has the responsibility to monitor the activities in our lives, both directly and indirectly. Whether this is watching our spending to make sure we do no overcharge, or encrypting mail to keep in secure, we need to be aware of what we are doing, and the reactions of others as a result of our actions. In this case, the action is spending money on credit, and the reaction is being monitored by credit agencies. My solution was to get rid of all the credit cards 4 years ago.. my credit history is trashed in part do to very low activity over the last 4 years, and of course, the side effect of maxing out 4 cards. -stepping off soapbox and looking for the next topic..-