What Is a Data Broker?


A data broker (also known as an information product company) is an organization that makes money by collecting your personal information, analyzing it, and licensing it out to be used by other companies for things like marketing purposes.

Data providers gather data from many different sources to create a profile of who you are. This profile includes things like your interests, hobbies, demographics, and even the products you use. Generally, data broker companies only deal with customers to collect information. A few of the top data brokerage companies are Epsilon, Acxiom, and Experian, but there are many data brokerages worldwide that make a hefty profit from aggregating and distributing consumers’ personal data.

Read more…
Source: McAfee


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Red Cross Begs Attackers Not to Leak 515K People’s Stolen Data

    January 20, 2022

    The Red Cross is imploring threat actors to show mercy by abstaining from leaking data belonging to 515,000+ “highly vulnerable” people that were stolen from a program used to reunite family members split apart by war, disaster or migration. “While we don’t know who is responsible for this attack, or why they carried it out, we ...

  • Technology developed to track spread of coronavirus could be abused, privacy campaigner warns

    January 16, 2022

    A medical privacy campaigner says technology developed to track the spread of COVID-19 is a new form of surveillance that could be abused. Phil Booth, coordinator at MedConfidential, warned that increased monitoring of wastewater from sinks, drains and toilets, which can reveal infections and drug use, needs to be properly regulated. “The concerns will be raised more ...

  • Former DHS official charged with stealing govt employees’ PII

    January 14, 2022

    A former Department of Homeland Security acting inspector general pleaded guilty today to stealing confidential and proprietary software and sensitive databases from the US government containing employees’ personal identifying information (PII). 61-year-old Charles Kumar Edwards coordinated the scheme while working for DHS-OIG (Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General) as an employee and acting IG ...

  • California town announces data breach involving police department, loan provider

    January 10, 2022

    Grass Valley, California has announced an extensive data breach involving the Social Security numbers and more of all city employees and vendors — as well as anyone who had their information given to the local police department. The city said in a notice that Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and health insurance information was leaked ...

  • FlexBooker apologizes for breach of 3.7 million user records, partial credit card information

    January 7, 2022

    Scheduling platform FlexBooker apologized this week for a data breach that involved the sensitive information of 3.7 million users. In a statement, the company told ZDNet a portion of its customer database had been breached after its AWS servers were compromised on December 23. FlexBooker said their “system data storage was also accessed and downloaded” as ...

  • Poland: Ruling party leader admits country has Pegasus hacking software

    January 7, 2022

    Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party and the country’s de facto leader, confirmed that the government has the Pegasus hacking software system but denied it had been used against opposition politicians in the 2019 parliamentary election campaign. “It would be bad if the Polish services did not have this type of ...