Data brokers outpace regulators as they mine new technologies

Companies that create data dossiers on consumers are tapping new technologies to unearth ever more intimate information despite intensifying regulatory scrutiny of the multibillion-dollar data broker industry. In the past 18 months, US lawmakers and federal regulators have launched a series of investigations to uncover how data brokers collect, track, trade and use information about people. Yet no new regulations have emerged to govern the fast-growing business of profiling individuals.

“This is like a train that is just going and going and going and nobody is at the controls except for the people who want it to run, run, run without knowing what the implications are,” said Joseph Turow, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. “One of the key characteristics of modern data brokers is a lack of restraint,” said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. “The degree to which no piece of data are sacred is evident in the reams of sensitive consumer data compiled, scored, circulated, and sold.”