Data Brokers: What They Are & Why You Should Care

So we’ve talked about how necessary it is for companies to maintain data transparency, and we’ve discussed the insane amount of information they collect and circulate, but what we haven’t gone into yet is the role of the data-mining companies themselves. Today we’re going to fix that, while also introducing some additional big data terminology to your lexicon.

As this 2012 CNN article explains, there are companies out there, fondly termed data brokers, that “collect things like contact information, demographics and your preferences on things” and then “aggregate that information to try to discern a picture of what people want.” CBS News defines them as “collecting, analyzing and packaging some of our most sensitive personal information and selling it as a commodity…to each other, to advertisers, even the government, often without our direct knowledge.” FYI, I’m not talking about Facebook anymore. No, this is that mysterious “third party” that you’ll find in nearly every TOS you’ve ever agreed to, it’s the all-knowing “them” I’ve referred to in every post. The CNN article introduces one such company called Acxiom. In an interview with the reporter, Acxiom CEO Scott Howe proudly offered the above quotes I used as a definition for data brokers while going on to explain the necessity of his company’s services. Thankfully, the article’s author goes on to report the many potential issues with these data brokers, particularly these following points:

1. “the average consumer has no idea that their intimate personal details are up for sale on these sites”

My bets are on the fact that you never knew Acxiom existed.But Acxiom knows your name, number, where you live, your gender and all the things you like and don’t like. You’ve never visited their site, and yet they’ve got a nice fat folder with your name on it, for sale to their various clients.

2. “data mining could open the door to hacking, identity theft and stalking.”

What companies like Acxiom do, and what all data brokers do, is create these enormous dossiers containing a lot of really important information on you. It doesn’t matter if you have “nothing to hide,” any law abiding citizen can have their entire lives hacked away by anyone savvy enough with a computer to get into whichever data mining company they so choose.  A security researcher from Dell SecureWorks explains that, “just basic information…can lead predators to potential victims… That’s a common scenario, actually.”

The article goes on to state several more critiques and I definitely recommend reading it if you’ve got some time.

The funny thing about these data brokers is that they seem to float in this mysterious grey area, a giant legislative question mark surrounds what they do and how they do it. There’s no federal regulation encouraging them to encrypt the information they have on you or otherwise keep it protected. CBS News explains that data brokers have always been around, but have grown immensely in volume as of late. What used to be somewhat harmless collections from surveys and phone calls has become malicious and dangerous. The author explains, “No one even knows how many companies there are trafficking in our data. But it’s certainly in the thousands, and would include research firms, all sorts of Internet companies, advertisers, retailers and trade associations. The largest data broker is Acxiom, a marketing giant that brags it has, on average, 1,500 pieces of information on more than 200 million Americans.” Can you even imagine what 1500 pieces of information on you would look like?

Data Brokers are viewed with plenty of criticism, which is something we are extremely happy to see. It’s great that big news names like CNN and CBS News are educating their readers about Big Data and explaining the numerous consequences that follow in data mining companies’ wake. Hopefully this post has helped clarify all those “them”s I’ve been referencing, while making the chain of information a little clearer.

There are some tools out there you can use to reduce the amount of information these companies have, such as Abine, a company that claims to quite literally “remove your information from data broker sites.” Of course this service comes at a cost, and cannot guarantee that everything will be found and removed. So remember, as always #thinkbeforeyouclick and be careful what you do online. Nothing is private, and you never know who’s watching.