Ray,
I did some investigating on my own and find out that all it takes is the push of a button with the right software and anyone can find out all kinds of information about anyone they want to. A friend of mine is a private investigator and a former deputy sheriff so I asked him if it was possible to collect data like this about someone and he invited me over to his office to find out. He has a professional version of the "spyware" software that we always get email solicitations for. All he had to do was put in my name and hometown into this software and punch a button on his keyboard. We tried both versions of my name, first name and last name as well as first name, middle initial and last name. Within about 10 minutes he had a 4-page report on me detailing all kinds of data. For example, my social security number, driver license number, concealed carry permit number, marriage certificate number, birth certificate number, divorce cause number, who I had worked for and how long I stayed at each position ever since I first entered the professional work force in 19XX, my college transcripts, high school transcripts, association memberships, volunteer efforts, what position I had held with each association I had ever belonged to, rather it was as an officer, director or volunteer, my credit report that detailed who I owed money too, how much and for how long (luckily it did not give out my account numbers) etc. The list of data he retrieved was stagger and extremely frightening. What is even scarier is that he informed me that this is all public data that anyone with the right program or enough time and resources can find out about. Then he proceeded to tell me that the law enforcement community has software available to them that can dig even deeper and could include all kinds of criminal history records, including those that are supposed to have been expunged from your record.
So is it possible for Dell to run a check on someone and find out if they are gun owners, what kind of business they have or what organizations they belong to and at what level they participate in them, ABSOLUTELY!!!
Now is this what Dell did prior to canceling my order? I can't say. No one at Dell told me that this is how they determined that I was ineligible to purchase their products. All I know is that after applying to purchase a computer by financing it with a payment plan I was turned away. I have never been told that my financing was denied. I tried talking to their customer service people and went up several layers in the supervisory chain of command before I was told that Dell would not sell me a computer because they did not know if my potential uses for the equipment would be legal or not. When I tried to pursue this conversation further I was informed that Dell had nothing further to say and that if I needed a system I would need to look elsewhere.
Hopefully, this data is helpful in explaining to you how I was treated by Dell and how easy it is for someone to find out all kinds of private information about each of us if they are determined to do so.
Yes you can post my responses as long as you leave out the phone number, email address and hometown. You have been the 20th or so person who has either emailed me or called about this and although I do want to make my fellow lawful gun owners aware of this situation, I am by nature a private person and do not enjoy a lot of notoriety. Thanks for understanding this.
Denny