Data brokers collecting billions of details to profile Americans

Billions of individual tidbits about American consumers are being collected and used by a handful of data brokers, a new report reveals, and the Federal Trade Commission says Congress can do something about it.
The FTC reviewed nine of these companies for the report released on Tuesday this week — Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability — and while they fell short of finding any evidence of illegal activity, the five-person panel of commissioners responsible for the analysis unanimously concluded that United States lawmakers should consider introducing privacy legislation to ensure Americans are aware of what and how their personal info is being used.
According to the 110-page study, brokers Acxiom, CoreLogic, Datalogix, eBureau, ID Analytics, Intelius, PeekYou, Rapleaf and Recorded Future are likely accumulating and selling for more information about US consumers than the American public realizes. These companies collect details about online transactions and other purchases, then place consumers in specialized groups where products and services can be narrowly targeted towards key demographics.
As Craig Timberg noted for the Washington Post, however, data broker companies are anything but vague when it comes to grouping these details.
“With potentially thousands of fields, data brokers segment consumers into dozens of categories such as ‘Bible Lifestyle,’ ‘Affluent Baby Boomer” or ‘Biker/Hell’s Angels,’” Timberg learned from the study. “One category, called ‘Rural Everlasting,’ describes older people with ‘low educational attainment and low net worths.’ Another, ‘Urban Scramble,’ includes concentrations of Latinos and African Americans with low incomes. One company had a field to track buyers of ‘Novelty Elvis’ items.”
“The extent of consumer profiling today means that data brokers often know as much — or even more — about us than our family and friends,” FTC Chairman Edith Ramirez said in a statement this week. “It’s time to bring transparency and accountability to bear on this industry on behalf of consumers, many of whom are unaware that data brokers even exist.”
Indeed, the commission’s report contains a call for action from congressional lawmakers, who the FITC is urging to open up the little-known world of data brokerage so more Americans are aware of how companies are building intricate, all-too-specific profiles about their interests and likes.
“Although consumers benefit from data broker practices which, for example, help enable consumers to find and enjoy the products and services they prefer, data broker practices also raise privacy concerns,” the FTC noted in their report.