The Dark Market for Personal Data

[Commentary] The reputation business is exploding. Having eroded privacy for decades, shady, poorly regulated data miners, brokers and resellers have now taken creepy classification to a whole new level. They have created lists of victims of sexual assault, and lists of people with sexually transmitted diseases. Lists of people who have Alzheimer’s, dementia and AIDS. Lists of the impotent and the depressed. Typically sold at a few cents per name, the lists don’t have to be particularly reliable to attract eager buyers -- mostly marketers, but also, increasingly, financial institutions vetting customers to guard against fraud, and employers screening potential hires. There are three problems with these lists. First, they are often inaccurate. Second, even when the information is accurate, many of the lists have no business being in the hands of retailers, bosses or banks. Third, people aren’t told they are on these lists, so they have no opportunity to correct bad information.

[Pasquale is a professor of law at the University of Maryland]