- The Trump administration wanted to prevent data brokers from selling information on American citizens
- The plan has now been abandoned
- Data brokerage is an industry of several billion dollars
The plan to prevent data brokers from selling personal and financial information generated by American citizens has been rebuilt.
In the United States, data brokers can collect and sell sensitive information about the country’s citizens, including names, addresses, social security numbers, navigation history, purchasing history, location data, etc. Usual buyers include advertisers and marketing specialists, financial institutions, recruiters, government organizations and insurance companies.
At the end of 2024, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced its intention to adjust the law on credit reports, a federal law which regulates the way in which consumer credit information was collected, used and shared. He was supposed to treat data brokers in the same way as any other company, which should have forced them to comply with the rules of confidentiality of the law.
Protect citizens
However, this rule has been recently withdrawn, Techcrunch, citing a new list in the Federal Register. Apparently, the acting director of the CFPB, Russell Vought, wrote that the rule was “not aligned with the current interpretation of the office” of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
The CFPB wanted to prevent data brokers from selling data on American citizens citing the risk of confidentiality, discrimination, lack of transparency and regulatory gaps. It would be allegedly that the objective was to protect consumers from harmful or unfair use of their personal information. Techcrunch says that last year, the FTC prohibited “several data brokers” of data collection and sharing without the authorization of individuals.
It should also be mentioned that data is fuel for most cyber attacks these days. Sensitive data is essential in phishing and phishing attacks, identity theft and can often be useful in brutal passwords. This is why the data brokerage industry is often the target itself.
Over the past two years, there have been several high -level cyber attacks against data brokerage and housing organizations, including the 2023 23andme attack, the national public data violation of 2024 and the 2024 snowflake incident.
Via Techcrunch
