Firm wants a base for your data

A giant corporation that owns major hotels, mortgage lenders, real-estate companies and tax-accounting services is getting into other business. Yours.

The Cendant Corp. wants to compile a massive database of its customers. The database would include more than 200 pieces of personal information, including credit-card numbers, e-mail addresses, driver’s license numbers and financial information such as income and mortgage balances.

The data would be collected from all of the corporation’s businesses and put into one place to “determine customer buying patterns and behavior,” according to a draft proposal obtained by The Washington Times.

It is legal for the company to collect and compile the information into one data center, and a Cendant spokesman called it a “standard practice among virtually every large company from around the world to use databases to better serve customers.”

But privacy advocates and legislators say the “standard practice” is becoming a dangerous trend, not just an invasion of privacy. For example, insurance companies use the information to weed out unwanted customers by looking at unhealthy buying habits, such as purchases of alcohol, cigarettes and red meat.

The Privacy Act of 1974 prevents the federal government from gathering information on citizens, but it doesn’t stop it from looking at the information gathered by the private sector. Such information also has been used by:

• The Drug Enforcement Agency, which has subpoenaed grocery-store customer databases in looking for large purchases of plastic bags to target drug dealers.

• The Internal Revenue Service, which has turned to data-mining companies in looking for individuals living lavishly and buying expensive items while underreporting income. All but one direct-marketing company refused to cooperate with the agency. After tests proved inconclusive, the project was abandoned in the 1990s.

Members of Congress and privacy advocates say privacy laws need to be updated to address these growing trends and advances in technology.

“Most Americans consider their personal information their private property,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, a sponsor of privacy legislation.

Cendant spokesman Elliot Bloom said he could not comment on the specifics of the “internal, confidential memo,” but that the proposal could be changed or modified in the future.

“We never, ever authorize inappropriate or external use of databases of customers. This is Cendant business and information about customers, and it’s marketing of those customers. We will continue to market to those customers and improve our marketing and do so in the letter of the law, and that is exactly our point of view,” Mr. Bloom said.

“Overall, what we are doing is no more than what any other company is doing to market to customers.”

Cendant owns about 20 companies, including Cendant Mortgage, Jackson Hewitt Tax Services, and real-estate companies Century 21, Coldwell Banker and ERA. Its lodging franchises include Amerihost Inn, Days Inn, Howard Johnson and Ramada Inn. It also owns car-rental companies Avis and Budget, as well as travel services Cheap Tickets, Lodging.com, Cendant Travel and Galileo International, a global-reservation system.

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