During a recent conversation I was surprised to find out that not all people understand the value of privacy protection. Unless confronted with the perspective of their data ending up in malicious hands, of course. However, when talking about privacy rights and their importance in the online environment, some people almost don’t grasp the full meaning of these notions. I wondered what would be the best reply when confronted with this type of carelessness. Could an important argument that point out the sheer value of personal digital information be the existence of data brokers?
How do data brokers underline the value of privacy?
Data brokers are professionals that gather and organize consumer information. They create detailed profiles of individuals.
Somewhere in such a database there might be your profile, for example. Publicly available personal info, preferences, search history, the sites you visited, the data you’ve submitted for contests, social media data and so on. We’ll detail the sources later. Data brokers sell this aggregated information regarding individuals to buyers, other people or businesses. The buyers could need them for marketing purposes, risk mitigation (fraud detection or banking-related activities) or for people search activities. Yes, people search. As in your ex school colleague trying desperately to find you. Or as in a private investigator or even a criminal trying to get more details on your whereabouts.
This data is extremely valuable. So valuable that it supports an entire industry. You might think twice about how easily you provide it for free to anonymous parties each time you leave a trail of information in the online environment.
Where does consumer data come from?
If you clicked our source-link above, you should find it to be extremely explanatory. Nevertheless, we will also summarize a few details here. Data brokers get their raw material out of these main sources:
- Public records and government directories (all types of individual records, licenses, Census-occasioned details and so on). Some of them are not even hard to access and can be found online. Others require asking for, or paying a fee, while some states limit disclosures of such information.
- The amazing amount of information individuals provide by their own will (e.g. all the online information, filled in directly by the subjects (1) or through an intermediary(2)). In the first category especially fall social media personal details, but also data provided when attending a college or high-school reunion, when participating in a contest and so on. There might be exceptional situations when certain people give interviews. They might provide extra data about themselves or their friend or siblings. That is eligible data, too.The second category comprises all information uploaded by other parties. It is basically the same info as in the first category, only you might not be aware it is online, since you did not put it there. It might also contain personal data entrusted to online databases which turned up to have security flaws. For example, a job search database you filled in your CV data. It might be that some entities from the employers’ section are data brokers, thus they access your data. Alternatively the database itself may not protect the information sufficiently, allowing unauthorized access.
- Data purchased or exchanged from/with retailers, financial institutions, analytics companies, tech companies. Often, such companies make deals in order to enrich their database and information ends up being exchanged, with or without payment involved.
What kind of information can data brokers collect?
It’s time to let anxiety in. That is, if you kept your calm so far. According to the FTC, data brokers may end up with data such as:
- your name, age, birthday, gender, plus physical and healthcare details;
- address and contact details;
- family details and living arrangements, your friends and their details;
- online and online habits, addictions, preferences, shopping habits, earnings, paying means and generally any relevant detail linking to your everyday life;
- religion, beliefs, political preferences, opinions, inclinations.
Should we go on? The detailed list can be found here, alongside 7 useful measures that help you strive to protect your online privacy. Why just strive? Because there is always the risk of data leaks or data breaches, and no one can guarantee full protection.
Our kindergarten-level advice on what data privacy is concerned would be to always take the time and opt out of as many data brokers as you can. First of all, start by noticing these data processing agreements. They seem to keep on coming out of all directions. When you purchase a new product, when you sign a new contract, when you book a trip – almost always there is data involved, and an almost unnoticeable agreement from your part. How many times did you agree for your data to be processed, in addition to signing up for a certain product or service?
What are the risks when data brokers sell your data?
Besides the weird fact that some professionals make money out of an immaterial belonging of yours, while you are hardly aware of this process, having your data sold is a high-risk reality. You never know where it might end up, or what particular habit of yours might raise an interest from whom.
There were cases of cyber extortion and blackmail. There is certainly a case of tailoring marketing campaigns on the weaknesses of customers in order to make them extremely hard to refuse. As illusory our freedom of choice might be, being profiled by data brokers manages to reduce it even more.
Hackers also target data broker databases because why steal by the piece when they can get the whole package.
Of course, there are related laws and guidelines, as you can see here. An overall view of data protection in USA, dating from July 2016 is, however, overwhelming in dimensions and variety. Not any individual may assimilate it and apply it in order to find out whether his/her rights are respected or not.
What each of us can do is to keep informed and be aware of the risks. In addition, taking a more precautionary approach when disseminating personal information or details concerning our family and friends is highly recommended.
