The Questionable Data Broker Industry: A Call for Action
Have you ever searched for yourself on the internet? You know, typing your first name, last name, city, and state into a search engine, only to be stunned by a flood of sites selling your information.
These sites seem to know who you are, where you live, your relatives, your phone number(s) and email(s), your income, and more. Even worse, this "more" often includes inaccurate or conflated details about any of those items, which can harm things like background checks by potential employers.
In 2024, I did such a search and was shocked by the sheer number of sites selling my information. What struck me even more was how they all shared the same conflated or inaccurate data. They listed places I've never lived, jobs I've never had, and names of relatives I've never heard of, despite my family tree having ten thousand people in it!
To add insult to injury, they would suggest I had been "legally involved." However, one could only uncover the details for a price. We know most people won't pay to see the record but will assume the inference to be true.
I use a service to remove my information from hundreds of websites, and for the most part, they've done an excellent job. Still, some sites are especially pernicious, republishing my information on their platforms in as little as 15 days after verified removal!
This problem goes far beyond personal frustration. It creates serious risks for those whose lives may be in danger, from C-suite executives in controversial industries, to law enforcement officers, to healthcare providers, to individuals escaping abuse or human trafficking.
Right now, there seems to be little recourse for most people. We're stuck playing an endless game of "Whac-A-Mole": information pops up here, we remove it, then it reappears there.
It's time for uniform law enforcement to shut down these entities once and for all. Until that happens, use privacy preserving tools and techniques to prevent the data collection from happening in the first place.
We may not have anything to hide but everything to protect.
