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ethics Guide

unSeen Cyberazzi

A data broker or data aggregator is a company that in practice it is difficult to learn how to request your data.
acquires and purchases consumer and other data from pub- Further, the process for doing so is torturous, and ultimately,
lic records, retailers, Internet cookie vendors, social media the data that is released is limited to innocuous data such
trackers, and other sources and uses it to create business as your name, phone numbers, and current and former
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intelligence that it sells to companies and the government. addresses. Without an easy means for viewing all of your
Two prominent data brokers are Datalogix and Acxiom data, it is impossible to verify its accuracy.
Corporation. Of even greater concern, however, is the unknown pro-
Data brokers gather vast amounts of data. According to cessing of such data. What business intelligence techniques
The New York Times, as of June 2012, Acxiom Corporation are employed by these companies? What are the accuracy
had used 23,000 servers to process data of 50 trillion trans- and reliability of those techniques? If the data broker errs
actions on 500 million consumers. It stores more than in predicting that you’ll buy a pizza on Friday night, who
15,000 data points on some consumers. 8 cares? But if the data broker errs in predicting that you’re
So, what do data brokers do with all this data? If you a terrorist, it matters. Data brokers are silent on these
buy pizza online on Friday nights only when you receive a questions.
substantial discount, a data broker (or the broker’s customer)
knows to send you a discount
pizza coupon Friday morning. If
you use a customer loyalty card
at your local grocery store and
regularly buy, say, large bags of
potato chips, the data broker or
its customer will send you cou-
pons for more potato chips or for
a second snack product that is
frequently purchased by potato
chip consumers. Or, as discussed
in Q1, if you suddenly start buy-
ing certain lotions and vitamins,
the data broker will know you’re
pregnant.
Federal law provides strict
limits on gathering and using
medical and credit data. For other
data, however, the possibilities
are unlimited. In theory, data
brokers enable you to view the
data that is stored about you, but
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