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Who Are the Biggest Data Brokers?
Some of the biggest data brokers are Lexis Nexis, Neilson, Experian, Equifax, and Acxiom. There are others, but these are the companies who have files on the largest number of people in the world. They go through the most drastic measures to get our personal information so they can sell it for a profit. Having our data also gives them a certain amount of control over the economy and decisions that are made about us and our ability to succeed in the world. More often than not, their data is inaccurate. The sources can be choppy at Best since they buy their data from a variety of places. Social media posts are no indication of our real thoughts, feelings, actions, plans or propensity for risk. They are, at best, a dressed up or distorted version of our real selves. If it weren’t so serious of an issue, it would be comical that data brokers think they know us and can predict individual behavior based on the information they have gathered about us from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter.
In Europe, it is illegal to use personal data except for the immediate intended purpose. In the United States and other places, data brokers have been given full reign to have access to and keep, use, save, and sell our personal information. They sell to insurance companies, who deny using this information to decide rates for automobile, life, health and homeowners insurance, but have been caught more than once doing just that. Data brokers also sell our personal information to banks and other lending institutions. These companies decide what interest rate you get based on this data. This is illegal and unethical. Companies have denied using this data to set rates, however, like many insurance companies, they also have been caught using data broker data to make important financial decisions about individuals. These decisions drastically affect the lives of millions of people.
As a hypothetical scenario, imagine that your life is in the control of a data broker, let’s say it’s a fake company called Pexis Lexis; they are the “data experts” and have access to your most private information and even your medical records because they process medical information for multiple large medical empires and insurance companies. Now they have all the cards on a huge portion of the US population. Because they can manipulate our data, they get to decide who gets a great interest rate and who doesn’t. It’s up to them who gets to purchase a home and who doesn’t. Imagine that they are easily bought off by wealthy special interest groups or even wealthy individuals. Would it be feasible that they could use their influence to destroy specific people and keep them from getting a car loan, a credit card, a home loan or affordable health and life insurance? While this seems far-fetched, it is possible that this is the direction we are going in when the government allows companies to have total control over their citizens’ personal information.
The best way to get control over your personal information is to get it offline. You might not have control right now over what data brokers are doing with your data, but you can do something about your data being online. If your name is coming up on websites, if you want to remove your name from the internet, if you want to remove google search results that are turning up information about you, then you can take actions to fix it. Find a good internet removal service to help you delete information from the internet. It’s a great first step to getting a handle on what is shared about you and what isn’t.
