Data brokers, also known as information brokers, collect personal information, package it into bundles, and sell it to advertisers or other third parties.
On the Internet, we are effectively giving away huge amounts of personal information by using search engines, posting on social media, accessing websites that track us, using mobile phone APPS, buying and selling etc.
We give this information away freely and sometimes it’s used for our benefit but often to help businesses sell more to us and scammers to take from us.
Data brokerage relies on this freely available information that they can collect, package and sell on.
The largest of the data brokers are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion and it’s a multi billion dollar industry.
There are four main types of data brokerage:
- Marketing and advertising
This information lets the advertiser target what they believe are relevant adverts at you. Can lead to adverts for the same products following you around from web site to web site. Some people prefer to have targeted adverts rather than random ones, but many feel this intrusive.
- Financial information
This is essential at times e.g. when you want to take out a bank loan or a mortgage – the prospective lender needs to be able to check on your previous financial dealings to determine what level of risk you are.
This data is also used to prevent fraud.
- Personal health information
This more about Marketing than about any benefit to you. Companies want to know what medication you buy, what health supplements you use, what medical questions you search on etc. in order to sell more health products and services to you.
- People Search
These companies look for any information on you that they can find (e.g. social media profiles and postings, companies house records etc.) and then sell to a wide range of businesses including political organisations, charities, Marketing companies and many more. There are numerous web sites where you can lookup individuals – usually they charge for more than basic information.
If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.
