Data Brokers Are Selling Your Personal Information
Did you know that there are different types of identifying personal information?
Companies that specialize in selling personal information are commonly referred to as data brokers. Before you disregard their activity and claim it’s illegal, you should understand that almost everything they do under current regulations is basically legal, if not a little bit shady. Most of the information you have shared on the internet was shared voluntarily.
No one held a gun up to your head and forced you to give your name, address, and phone number to Facebook. If you’re like most people, you filled in these forms simply because that’s what we all have been taught to do our whole lives. Someone gives us a form and we fill in as much as possible. Facebook and many other companies have taken advantage of this cultural norm.
Did you know that there are different types of identifying personal information? Most data brokers cover a wide playing field, but it’s a good idea to differentiate the types of personal information they sort out and seek.
Personal identifying information
This information includes things like your name (including previously used names), past and current addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers. This is the most general information that can be found about you online. It is, nevertheless, important in the grand scheme of things.
This information is used for a variety of different things, but most of time it’s either used to target you for ads or sold as a product on websites like Whitepages, Intelius, and Spokeo. These websites sell subscriptions to personal information to whoever can pay them.
Criminals, law enforcement agencies, and employers all use these websites to snoop on people like you and I. Of course, everyone has different reasons for using data brokers, but if nothing can be found on you, then you’re safe from prying eyes. Contact Wiperts right now to remove your personal information from the internet.
Sensitive personal information
This information is what really changes lives. Sensitive personal information includes Social Security Numbers, driver’s license numbers, your date of birth, and other birthdays in your family. This information, in theory, should be rather hard to get. However, if you think about it, you will certainly remember at least one instance where you shared all of this information online – that’s right, online credit report checks routinely ask for this information.
Unfortunately, credit reporting agencies have suffered major leaks recently, spilling personal information all over the internet. Wiperts specializes in removing personal information from the internet. Google, Bing, and Yahoo should do a better job automatically removing this information from the internet, but clicks equal ad revenue. Wiperts serves you, not advertising agencies. Keep your confidential government issued information off the internet with Wiperts.
Demographic information
This is the type of information that advertisers use for their marketing campaigns. It includes components such as location, age, height, gender, weight, country of origin as well as race and ethnicity. Other important considerations are education level, religion, language, and family ties, such as the presence of elderly parents and children, military veterans, and young children.
This type of personal information is one of the most commonly sought after, as it provides a lot of valuable intel for digital marketers. They can take advantage of it in order to properly localize and finetune their ad campaigns. Delivering targeted ads to specific demographics has become easier than ever due to this kind of data collection.
There’s no reason to make “a one size fits all” ad anymore, it takes too much airtime and tries to cover too many age groups. Advertisers have figured out how old you are and what kind of ads to deliver to you while you watch YouTube videos or browse the internet.
Public record and court documents
This type of information includes bankruptcies, judgments, liens, marriage licenses, criminal offenses as well as convictions, voter registration (as well as party identification), and other general information that can be public legally.
Everyone makes mistakes. Small things should be forgiven and forgotten. If your public record is online and your past actions weren’t criminally heinous or seriously bad, then most people would agree that you deserve a second chance to rebuild your reputation. Ask Wiperts what can be done. Don’t let your past haunt you.
Social media and device data
Social media and device data are valuable pieces of information that make-up your consumer profile. Companies can identify the devices that you use, allowing them to tailor ads accordingly. If you are browsing on a Samsung device, you will see more Android and Samsung related ads. If you are browsing on an Apple device, you will see more Apple and iOS related ads. It’s really not that surprising that this device information is used for marketing purposes.
Other information includes online purchases, friend connections, internet provider and connection type, social networks you use, operating system, software purchases, types of posts on social media – pretty much everything you do online is carefully being collected, stored, and analyzed.
We used to be afraid that the government and “big brother” companies would track our every move via flip phones. Well, science fiction is now reality. GPS is regularly used to deliver local deals, goods, and services. Uber and Tesla’s autopilot would not be able to function properly without smartphones and real-time location data.
If your location is listed online, then that’s not a good thing. Telling people where you frequent is a recipe for disaster. Tagged locations, photos, and posts give away too much info to criminals like stalkers and robbers. Removing this personal information from the internet is in your best interests.
Info packaged for retail
As you can see by now, there are different types of personal information. Data brokers like Facebook, Google, Intelius, and Whitepages all use data scraping algorithms and software in order to collect these types personal information.
Some websites create individual packages of personal information for sale – such as detailed profiles. Big data companies on the other hand analyze it and present it in usable charts and graphs so their clients can take advantage of it.
All of this exposes you to a tremendous amount of unwanted spam and other marketing approaches that you just don’t want to be subjected to. No one likes robocalls or spam text messages.
If you have a lot of personal information already shared on the internet, you should strongly consider removing it by using Wiperts. Doing it by yourself will take a lot of time and hassle. Your personal information may have been copied onto websites that you have never visited or authorized. Stop data brokers, criminals, and big companies from profiting off your personal data. Contact Wiperts today.
