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:
- US agencies scrub websites in bid to protect Afghans
August 18, 2021
Multiple United States agencies that operated in Afghanistan and worked with Afghan citizens have been hastily purging their websites, removing articles and photos that could endanger the Afghan civilians who interacted with them and now fear retribution from the Taliban. The online scrubbing campaign appeared to begin late last week when it became clear that the ...
- Afghanistan: The Taliban have seized U.S. military biometrics devices
August 17, 2021
The Taliban have seized U.S. military biometrics devices that could aid in the identification of Afghans who assisted coalition forces, current and former military officials have told The Intercept. The devices, known as HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, were seized last week during the Taliban’s offensive, according to a Joint Special Operations Command official ...
- Secret terrorist watchlist with 2 million records exposed online
August 16, 2021
A secret terrorist watchlist with 1.9 million records, including classified “no-fly” records was exposed on the internet. The list was left accessible on an Elasticsearch cluster that had no password on it. In July this year, Security Discovery researcher Bob Diachenko came across a plethora of JSON records in an exposed Elasticsearch cluster that piqued his interest. Read ...
- T-Mobile says hackers accessed user data but won’t confirm SSN breach of 100 million customers
August 16, 2021
T-Mobile is looking into allegations that a hacker stole 106GB of data containing the social security numbers, names, addresses and driver’s license information for more than 100 million people. In a statement to ZDNet, T-Mobile said it is “aware of claims made in an underground forum and have been actively investigating their validity.” Teams at T-Mobile ...
- Nearly one million credit cards offered on underground forum
August 10, 2021
Researchers with D3Lab have discovered the data of almost one million credit card holders being sold on an underground forum, according to a blog post released this week. In a sample of 980,930 files acquired by D3Lab analysts on Monday, the batch contained names, addresses, credit card numbers, expirations and CVVs. Read more… Source: ZDNet
- Israeli Government Agencies Visit NSO Group Offices
July 29, 2021
Authorities from multiple agencies of the Israeli government paid a visit the offices of the NSO Group as part of a new investigation into claims that the secretive firm is selling its spyware to threat actors for targeted attacks, according to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. A single tweet from the ministry announced the raid on ...

