The dark market for personal data urges for new laws 

data protection

Companies should disclose the information they sell about us.

Having eroded privacy for decades, shady, poorly regulated data miners, brokers and resellers have now taken creepy classification to a whole new level. They have created lists of victims of sexual assault, and lists of people with sexually transmitted diseases. Lists of people who have Alzheimer’s, dementia and AIDS. Lists of the impotent and the depressed.

There are lists of “impulse buyers.” Lists of suckers: gullible consumers who have shown that they are susceptible to “vulnerability-based marketing.” And lists of those deemed commercially undesirable because they live in or near trailer parks or nursing homes. Not to mention lists of people who have been accused of wrongdoing, even if they were not charged or convicted.

Typically sold at a few cents per name, the lists don’t have to be particularly reliable to attract eager buyers — mostly marketers, but also, increasingly, financial institutions vetting customers to guard against fraud, and employers screening potential hires.

The lists, however, are often inaccurate, many of the lists have no business being in the hands of retailers, bosses or banks and people aren’t told they are on these lists, so they have no opportunity to correct bad information.

These problems can’t be solved with existing law. The Federal Trade Commission has strained to understand personal data markets — a $156-billion-a-year industry — and it can’t find out where the data brokers get their information, and whom they sell it to. Hiding behind a veil of trade secrecy, most refuse to divulge this vital information.

The market in personal information offers little incentive for accuracy; it matters little to list-buyers whether every entry is accurate — they need only a certain threshold percentage of “hits” to improve their targeting. But to individuals wrongly included on derogatory lists, the harm to their reputation is great.

The World Privacy Forum, a research and advocacy organization, estimates that there are about 4,000 data brokers.

It’s unrealistic to expect individuals to inquire, broker by broker, about their files. Instead, we need to require brokers to make targeted disclosures to consumers.

Privacy protections in other areas of the law can and should be extended to cover consumer data.

Source: NYT- The dark market for personal data urges for new laws

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