Data brokers push back against congressional scrutiny

An advertising trade association dismissed lawmakers' concerns about companies that buy and sell information about consumers.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers wrote to major data brokers last month and questioned them about their business practices. “By combining data from numerous offline and online sources, data brokers have developed hidden dossiers on almost every U.S. consumer,” the lawmakers wrote. “This large scale aggregation of the personal information of hundreds of millions of American citizens raises a number of serious privacy concerns." But in a response, the Digital Marketing Association said the lawmakers are questioning "legitimate commercial data practices that are essential to America’s job creation, economic growth and global leadership." The group said that targeted advertising is "the fuel on which America’s free market engine runs."