Data Brokers

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What’s a Data Broker?

A recent study at Sanford found they could purchase health, religious, and financial information on U.S. Military Service Members. This information cost as little as $0.12 a record. How did they do this? Data Brokers. To start, a Data Broker specializes in collecting information about companies or individuals from private and public sources for sale to other parties. Our focus will be on the sale of personal information, that of individuals.

This article won’t solely be about data brokers. However, they will feature heavily. We’re leading with topic in our Privacy Primer series to help tie together follow-on articles. It will help you understand how tidbits of personal information come together to paint a detailed picture of your life.

Common Sources of Information

So for Data Brokers to obtain and aggregate all this information, it has to come from somewhere. Like where? There are the common ones like social media, e-mail providers, and public records. Those online platforms providing you a service at no-charge? They may profit off the data you provide. Many times, they sell your information to advertising agencies, data brokers, or other platforms. Look to their Privacy Policy to see what information they sell, and to who they share with.

There are other data sources you might not guess. For instance, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) usually has your name, billing information, and address. ISPs posses some insight into your internet traffic. They may identify the sites you most often visit, if you’re using file sharing services like torrents, and other tidbits of information someone may want to purchase.

Do you often receive extended vehicle warranty offers? You may have the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to thank. The Florida DMV made $77,000,000 in 2017 alone selling personal information like names, dates of birth, and vehicle details. Yes, laws limit who can purchase information from the DMV. But there isn’t anything preventing the purchaser from reselling your information to another party.

Remember that smartphone you tote around all day? iOS and Android keep tabs on your activities, to some degree. They aren’t supposed to peddle this data, but frequently leverage it to push targeted ads or for “improving their services.” Mobile apps? Well, that’s a whole other tale.

These apps often have access to personal details, like names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. Many apps often have access to location data as well. For example, Life360, a popular family safety app was caught selling the detailed location informationof its users.

Types of Information

So just think of the information you commonly divulge to mobile apps, forums, financial institutions, or really any other party (not an all-encompassing list):

• Full Name
• Date of Birth
• Mailing / Billing Addresses
• E-mail Addresses
• Phone Numbers
• Personal Photos
• Active Location Data / Location History
• Personal Interests
• Political Views
• Religious Information
• Healthcare Data
• Transaction Information
• Job History

Exchange of Information

A single organization most likely won’t ask for this laundry list of information. This is where Data Brokers come in. Maybe you fill out an application online or in-person providing your name, date of birth, and phone number. Then you create an account on another website requiring your phone number and e-mail address.

Next, a data broker buys your information from both parties. The broker then uses your phone number as a link between your accounts. Don’t forget, they also have your e-mail address. Your e-mail can help identify your public accounts and allowing the broker to scrape your public activity. They now possess your likes, dislikes, location check-ins, political views, and other public posts.

There isn’t much of a limit to what brokers collect, how they collect it, or who they sell it to. Common customers often include:

• Advertising Agencies
• People-Search Websites
• Fraud Departments
• Insurance & Financial Service Providers
• Law Enforcement

What’s Next?

Now, this isn’t to scare you. We just want you to be aware of the data-selling ecosystem at a high level. Information you provide about yourself or family can and often ends up being sold to other parties. In the coming weeks, we’ll be going over ways of minimizing the amount of information ending up in the hands of Data Brokers.

But what about information already in their possession? Michael Bazzell at IntelTechniques provides some awesome resources for manually removing your information from People-Search and Data Brokers (Some of the largest ones: Axciom, CoreLogic, Equifax, Experian, LiveRamp) . You can also look at paid automated tools like OneRep.