Consumer Reports Goes After Data Brokers in Latest Issue

by Mike Bevel, CollectionIndustry.com

Consumer Reports is setting its sights and its site on the practice of data brokering. Two-word summation of the article: it?s dicey.

Data brokering is a tough sell to most consumers. How a consumer broker ended up not only with a customer?s social security number, but the credit scores, credit cards, medical issues, and personal proclivities is a tough story to tell, and doesn?t earn data brokers any consumer warm fuzzies.

Consumer Report?s quick take on the topic:

• Data brokers are willing to sell even your most sensitive information to paying customers, some of them crooks.

• When CR staffers asked to see their own files, they received scant information. One report contained 31 errors.

• The federal government is a steady customer of the data collectors, but there?s no way to know what it collects or exactly how much it pays.

• Pretexters, who lie to get information about you and sell it to anybody, operate largely free of regulation.