Data about us is so valuable that companies now offer cheap or free services in return for collecting data about us. If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many free email providers, or free streaming services, it’s because you are the commodity, or at least the data you generate is.
Data brokers make a living by collecting all this data about you and building a profile linking data from various sources. This profile data is organised and analysed and then sold to whoever can make use of it.
Examples of some of the data collected includes:
Your name, contact numbers, email, and address
Age, gender, and other physical attributes
Employment status, income band, credit status
Geographical region for home, work, and travel
Political beliefs, religion, marriage history, dependants
Patent and copyright data, businesses owned
Property and vehicle ownership
Social media membership
Club and organisation membership
Digital entertainment subscriptions and viewing habits
Web surfing usage
Fitness and health tracking
Data brokers, also known as Information brokers collate all this data and sell it to anyone that can make use of it. There are some restrictions to what they can collect, store, and sell, depending on the country they operate in and where the individuals the data is about resides, such as GDPR in the UK.
The data can be scraped from public sources and then combined using bespoke software or AI. This may introduce errors. Individuals can submit freedom of information requests to brokers requesting details of what information is held about them in their database. In some regions you can then request to have this data removed known as the right to be forgotten.
Some data brokers have been hacked due to lax security practices. They are an attractive target as they contain consumer data that is useful to malicious actors that do not wish to pay for it nor wish to be identified as having access to it.
The main types of data broker are:
Marketing and advertising
People searching
Financial information
Personal health
How much info do data brokers have about you?