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
Related:
- After NSO Scandal, What’s Next for Israel’s Cyber Industry?
December 28, 2021
The year 2021 was not a good one for NSO Group, an Israeli technology firm that became famous, and then notorious, for its Pegasus spyware, capable of remote surveillance of smartphones. Once a promising startup that developed a unique tool to fight against terror and crime, NSO Group is now associated with targeted attacks against journalists ...
- Phishing incident causes data breach at West Virginia hospitals
December 22, 2021
A hospital system in West Virginia has suffered a data breach resulting from a phishing attack, which gave hackers access to several email accounts. Monongalia Health System — which runs Monongalia County General Hospital Company and Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital Company — said that hackers had access to several email accounts from May 10 to August ...
- UK National Crime Agency finds 225 million previously unexposed passwords
December 21, 2021
The United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency and National Cyber Crime Unit have uncovered a colossal trove of stolen passwords. We know this because Troy Hunt, of Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) fame, yesterday announced the agency has handed them over to his service, which lets anyone conduct a secure search of stolen passwords to check if ...
- Russian hackers leak confidential UK police data on the ‘dark web’ after their ransom was rejected
December 19, 2021
Confidential information held by some of Britain’s police forces has been stolen by Russian hackers in an embarrassing security breach, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. The cyber-criminal gang Clop has released some of the material it plundered from an IT firm that handles access to the police national computer (PNC) on the so-called ‘dark web’ ...
- Meta bans ‘cyber-mercenaries’ that targeted 50,000 people
December 17, 2021
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has banned several “cyber-mercenary” groups thought to have been offering surveillance services aimed at activists, dissidents and journalists worldwide. The social media giant said on Thursday it had begun warning about 50,000 people it believed may have come under scrutiny across more than 100 nations. The Facebook parent said it deleted accounts tied ...
- A deep dive into an NSO zero-click iMessage exploit: Remote Code Execution
December 16, 2021
Google Project Zero researchers want to thank Citizen Lab for sharing a sample of the FORCEDENTRY exploit with them, and Apple’s Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR) group for collaborating with Google Project Zero on the technical analysis. The editorial opinions reflected below are solely Project Zero’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the organizations ...

