Three AM 911 call, 9 AM salesman

"Through this incident I've learned people should instead contact their home insurance company and get an approved list of vendors to choose from."

I don't agree with this. Never contact your insurance company unless you plan on filing a claim, just asking for this list is equivalent to a claim.

If you have a valid claim, your insurance can't force you to use a list of vendors. You can choose any vendor you want to. The vendors work/cost must be appropriate.

So if I understand this correctly, this company gets certain information about 911 calls, and then sells it to third parties?

I wonder how much information they get, because this could get a lot darker. Imagine if calls to the police reporting domestic violence resulted in advertising material from divorce lawyers. (A domestic violence victim might well want a divorce lawyer, but unsolicited material showing up in their mailbox may put them at risk by enraging their already-violent spouse.)

This can be a sleazy industry. Servpro is the big corporate side, but the New York Times reported a few years ago about actual criminal intimidation in the industry (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/03/nyregion/fire-truck-chase...)

I highly doubt Matt Haughey is correct about pulsepoint being the source of this information. The source was almost certainly services that scan the public radio broadcast of emergency communications. As a first correction, pulsepoint isn’t a company. It is a nonprofit. Obviously nonprofits can sell data, but it is clear Haughey didn’t go very deep in his research to get such a basic item wrong.

> That's a sleazy business model but it's not illegal

I feel bad for folks who live in countries without a GDPR equivalent.

The ICO's guidance says "You can rely on legitimate interests for marketing activities if you can show that how you use people’s data is proportionate, has a minimal privacy impact, and people would not be surprised or likely to object"

I refuse to believe people would not be surprised or likely to object to this sort of marketing. It's creepy and invasive, and preying on people who may have lost their possessions or the house they've lived in for decades. I would be completely outraged if I received a visit of this nature after making a call to the _emergency services_. That's completely insane!

Without being able to rely on legitimate interests, there would not be an opportunity for data to be legally shared and processed in this way. None of the other lawful bases would apply, in my view.

It seems like it would be very, very easy to make these Servpro salespeople unreasonably busy undertaking sales calls that do not have a worthwhile rate of return.

Thank you for sharing. I particularly enjoyed the call out where you highlight what you learned from the incident. Took the post from fear-brain to information-brain for me (don't mind my curiosity haha).

I had a much less intrusive incident but equally "alarming" ;). The apartment I live in has hard wired smoke/carbon monoxide alarms (with backup battery). One night, ~2am 1 of them starts beeping that the battery is dead. I confirm the breaker didn't flip or anything...finally decided to complete disassemble it and get some sleep. 4 of these in the apartment. Head hits the pillow and a second one goes off! Take all 4 down and live dangerously for an evening.

In the morning I do my research - turns out these things just start doing that after 10 years. "Get a new one!" it peeps incessantly.

Shame me please - as I bought replacements. I'll save this post for myself in 10 years so at least I can be the one to say "I told you so".

I happened to be seated behind some people on an aircraft who were in the business of doing these sales pitches and discussing it without shame. But in their case, they were targeting people who called the police regarding property crime, and then trying to sell them alarm systems.

Nothing they said was illegal, but it felt immoral and like they were taking advantage of people in vulnerable situations. Although I feel like we aren't meant to discuss morality when there is money to be made, if it is capitalism and business, then anything and everything is fair game -- even this.

“ 911 calls are mostly public information since they involve public services who all need to communicate with one another.” Umm not in Europe. First of all Tetra/Dimetra calls are E2E encrypted (with some famous vulnerabilities) then there’s privacy laws etc. It’s surprising that in the US where you have the right to protect your home and privacy even with lethal means, the same measures don’t extend cybernetically.

This sorta thing could happen without the API integration, police radio calls happen on the public radio waves, anyone can listen and go to the address too. If the police encrypt their radio, they usually rebroadcast with a delay, in the interest of transparency, so it’s still possible.

ServPro is actually one of the less bad ones. BELFOR are even pushier, and take advantage of the fact that building owners and building renters tend to have different priorities in fire cases to gain unlawful access to damaged units. I had Belfor people in my smoke-damaged home without my knowledge constantly, and they made off with a bit of valuable stuff during that unsupervised time. I was renting back then, and of course my say meant nothing to these people.

Very scummy industry overall, everyone we interacted with in the wake of that fire left a bad taste in our mouths. ServPro was the original company on the job before Belfor somehow took the contract from em, and they were at least professional and understanding of the awful circumstance people were in.

Things like this are pretty much why I don't answer my front door anymore unless I'm expecting someone. Too many ads.