U.S. PIRG Education Fund delivers over 9,000 signatures to CFPB requesting data broker rule

Today we delivered 9,075 signatures from U.S. PIRG Education Fund members to the CFPB asking it to move forward with a rule that will help better protect Americans’ data in the digital age. 

Data brokers are shadowy third party companies, many of whom you’ve never heard of, making billions recklessly selling your data to others. These companies can use tracking technology like web cookies that embed in your browser and collect information about everything you do online – your location, what you search for, what web pages you visit, and what purchases you make. Data brokers package up and sell this information widely to others – and the whole thing is basically unregulated. 

The sheer volume of our data controlled by these brokers is staggering. One data broker studied by the Federal Trade Commission reported having 3,000 data points on nearly every U.S. consumer. And the types of data they sell are concerning. One Duke study found data brokers willing to sell Americans’ mental health data to researchers. Another report found researchers could easily buy information of U.S. military personnel from data brokers online.

Sometimes data brokers sell this information to other data brokers. Other times they sell it to advertisers, political campaigns, and even scammers. For example, the Department of Justice recently charged one data broker for selling lists of vulnerable Americans — including the elderly and people with Alzheimer’s — to scammers as ideal victims for a fake lottery scam.

Right now there are no real rules regulating the collecting, buying and selling of Americans’ data — but the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) can change that.

The CFPB has been studying data brokers and their impact on people’s financial wellbeing. It has been considering putting out a new Consumer Reporting rule that would bar data brokers from selling people’s data for irrelevant purposes, like to robocallers or the targeted advertising industry. 

We want to see this new rule published as soon as possible. Every moment we delay is another moment our data is being harvested, bought and sold.