you are like most people, you most certainly think that Facebook and Google are the companies which know most about you. However, there is a certain group of companies which are a hold of a lot more of your personal information than Google and Facebook. These companies are commonly referred to as data brokers. Before you disregard their activity and claim it’s illegal, you should understand that everything they do is under the current legislative regulations and there is nothing wrong with it. Remember, the information you share on the Internet is shared voluntary as per your own personal will and there is nothing wrong with certain instances who collect it and sell it for profit.
Think of it this way – when real estate agencies compile and sort information about properties listed for sale on the internet they don’t get sanctioned. The same is with your personal information. If you share it at instances which aren’t private and are accessible by third parties, you don’t have the right to complain afterwards. Of course, there are things that you can do to prevent this from happening, but more on this later.
Now, did you know that these companies are also specialized? There are huge specialized enterprises which are going to sort out information differentiated on certain criteria. Let’s take a look at the most common differentiating criteria.
- Identification Data
These are companies which collect and sell information such as your name and previously used names, address history and current address, latitude and longitude, email address and phone numbers. This is basically the most generic general information which could be found online about you. It’s used for a range of different things ranging from email marketing campaigns to something else that you may need.
- Sensitive identifying data.
Now, this is the data which is a bit more sensitive than the general information. This graph includes social security number, number of your driver’s license, date of birth, date of birth of your children in the household, as well as date of birth of different family members in this particular household. This is important and it’s information which is rather hard to get. However, if you think about it, you will certainly remember at least one instance where you shared all of that information.
- Demographic information
This is the type of information which a lot of marketers use for their demographic campaigns. It includes components such as age, height, gender, weight, country of origin as well as race and ethnicity. Other important considerations are the education level, religion, language, family ties, demographic characteristic of the family members in your household, the presence of elderly parents and children, number of surnames, veterans and others of the kind. This is very important information which can be used for a range of different things.
It’s also one of the most commonly sought after as it provides a lot of valuable in-tell for digital marketers and they can take advantage of it in order to properly localize their campaigns.
- Public record and court information
This is also an important part and it also focuses on a few key characteristics, such as bankruptcies, judgments, liens, marriage licenses, criminal offenses as well as convictions, state licenses as well as registrations, voting registration as well as party identification and others of the kind. The information is more specialized and it’s less utilized when it comes to it.
- Social media as well as technology data
This is valuable market information which is capable of being used to create your customer profile. Using this particular type of information companies can identify the gadgets that you use and need and this would allow them to tailor proposals as per your customer profile. The information includes electronic purchases, friend connections, internet provider and connection type, are you a member of more than 5 social networks, operating system, software purchases, type of posts on social media, presence of an owner of a computer, mobile devices and others of this kind. As you can see, this could be used for a wide range of different things.
- Information about your general interests
These include things such as attendance at certain sporting events, interests in charity, gambling, life events, usage of media channels, pets, leanings in politics, assimilation code and others of this type. It’s also a part of your personal information which used by different corporations in order to create the fullest customer profile – it’s particularly important.
As you can see, there are quite a lot of different data “packages” so to speak. Now, as you can probably imagine, it’s not easy to gather information of this kind. This is where data brokers come into the picture. They use data scraping algorithms and software in order to collect the necessary type of information. Then they sort it out and present it in usable charts and graphs so that interested parties can take proper advantage out of it.
However, this could expose you to a tremendous amount of unwanted spam ads and other marketing approaches that you just don’t want to be subjected to. With this in mind, it’s essential that you remain private and keep it at bay throughout all the time you browse the internet.
With this in mind, if you have a lot of personal information already shared on the internet, you might want to consider removing it. However, the instances from which you’d have to do so are numerous and this is particularly challenging. As such, you might want to consider getting the services of a professional data removal companies. We are going to make sure that there is absolutely no sensitive information about you on the Internet. What is more, we are going to protect you from data brokers as we know how to keep your information out of their reach. Remember that what they do isn’t illegal – you are giving this information away on your own. That’s why you need to be careful.
