About a month ago, I read Kashmir Hills piece in the New York Times about secret consumer scores that companies give to people.

Essentially, these hidden dossiers rate and describe our behavior as consumers, from how we use customer service, what we buy, how much we spend, how often we return stuff we buy, and how much money we probably make.

Consumer scores can contain Airbnb messages to hosts, delivery orders from apps like GrubHub, metadata and logs from how often an app is opened. (If youre curious about whether a service you use is involved, its probably in the privacy policy you dont read.)

These scores are similar to credit scores in some ways. Though they may not affect our abilities to get a loan, for example, they help companies understand consumers to target them more efficiently, and they might result in preferential treatment for those with high scores.

A story last year from the Wall Street Journal found that a consumers lifetime value score, one of the secret scores, could mean that one consumer waits on hold for a companys customer service rep for 45 minutes, while another waits just a few seconds. The Journal also reported that a better score could give you a better shot at an airline upgrade.

But there is one crucial difference: the scores are really hard to get and arent regulated. Credit reporting, on the other hand is run by the three major credit reporting agencies and is generally accessible if you ask for it. The agencies are federally required to operate annualcreditreport.com, where consumers can pull their credit report from each bureau for free every year.

Hills piece in the Times describes jumping through hoops to get her score. I got access to my secret consumer score, she wrote. Now you can get yours, too.

However, I tried and so far, have failed.

These scores of the public are not meant for public

In early November, I tried Hills strategy and emailed two of the companies that would most likely have files on me, Sift and Zeta Global.