Frankenstein Data: How Data Brokers Stitch Together—and Sell—Your Digital Self

Your digital life is being stitched together—one purchase, one search, one swipe at a time.

Data brokers collect and combine fragments of your personal information to build detailed profiles they can sell to advertisers, employers, and anyone willing to pay.

While you can request that these brokers delete your data, many make it almost impossible to do so.

A joint investigation by CalMatters and The Markup found that 35 data brokers had intentionally hidden their opt-out pages from search results, making it harder for people to remove their information.

The result: a patchwork version of you exists online—a Frankenstein of your data, stitched together without your consent.

Moreover, practically anyone can purchase this sensitive info. That ranges from advertisers to law enforcement and from employers to anyone on the street who wants to know a lot more about you.

Here’s what’s happening, and what you can do about it.

Data brokers making it tougher to remove personal data from their sites

As part of the article, reporters analyzed 499 data broker sites registered in the state of California. Of them, 35 had search-blocking code. Additionally per the article, many opt out pages “required scrolling multiple screens, dismissing pop-ups for cookie permissions, and newsletter sign-ups and then finding a link that was a fraction the size of other text on the page.”[i]

Once the publications contacted the data brokers in question, multiple companies halted the practice, some responding that they were unaware their site had search-blocking code. Several others didn’t respond by the time the article was published and kept their practices in place.

Where do data brokers get such personal info?

There are several ways information brokers can get your info about you …

Sources available to the public: Some of your personal records are easily available to the public. Data brokers can collect public records like your voter registration records, birth certificate, criminal record, and even bankruptcy records. By rounding them up from multiple sources and gathering them in one place, it takes someone seconds to find out all these things about you, rather than spending hours poring over public records.

Search, browsing, and app usage: Through a combination of data collected from internet service providers (ISPs), websites, and apps, data brokers can get access to all kinds of activity. They can see what content you’re interested in, how much time you spend on certain sites, and even your daily travels thanks to location data. They also use web scraping tools (software that pulls info from the web), to gather yet more. All this data collecting makes up a multi-billion-dollar industry where personal data is gathered, analyzed, sold, and then sold again and again—all without a person’s knowledge.

Online agreements: As it is with smartphone apps, you’ll usually have to sign an agreement when signing up for a new online service. Many of these agreements have disclosures in the fine print that give the company the right to collect and distribute your personal info.

Purchase history: Data brokers want to know what products or services you’ve purchased, how you paid for them (credit card, debit card, or coupon), and when and where you purchased them. In some cases, they get this info from loyalty programs at places like supermarkets, drugstores, and other retailers. Kroger, one of the largest grocery chains, is a good example of how purchasing insights end up in the hands of others. According to Consumer Reports, the company draws 35% of its net income from selling customer data to other companies.

What can I do about companies collecting my data?

For starters, there aren’t any data privacy laws on the federal level. That, so far, has fallen to individual states to enact. As such, data privacy laws vary from state-to-state, with California having some of the earliest and strongest protections on record, via the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA).

In all, 20 states currently have comprehensive privacy laws in place, with five others that have put narrower privacy protections in place, covering data brokers, internet service providers, and medical/biometric data.

States with Comprehensive Data Privacy Laws

For specific laws in your state and how they can protect you, we suggest doing a search for “data privacy laws [your state]” for more info.

Even if your state has no or narrow data privacy laws in place, you still have several ways you can take back your privacy.

How to protect your data from data brokers.

The first thing you can do is keep a lower profile online. That can limit the amount of personal info they can get their hands on:

• Be selective about what you share online.Don’t overshare personal info on social media. Avoid things like online quizzes and sweepstakes. And be aware that some data brokers indeed scour the web with scraping tools that gather up info from things like forum posts.
• Go private. Even better, lock down your privacy on social media. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and others have several settings that keep your profile from being scraped in the ways mentioned above. Features like our
• Use a virtual private network (VPN) whenever possible.A VPN hides your IP address and encrypts your data while you surf the web. McAfee’s Secure VPN protects your personal data and credit card information so you can browse, bank, and shop online without worrying about prying eyes, like data brokers and internet service providers (ISPs) that collect info about what you do online.

Remove your info from data brokers quickly with McAfee.

The list of data brokers is long. Cleaning up your personal data online can quickly eat up your time, as it requires you to reach out to multiple data brokers and opt out.

Rather than removing yourself one-by-one from the host of data broker sites out there, you have a solution: our Personal Data Cleanup.

Personal Data Cleanup scans data broker and people search sites and shows you which ones are selling your personal info. It also provides guidance on how you can remove your data from those sites. And if you want to save time on manually removing that info, you have options. Our McAfee+ Advanced and Ultimate plans come with full-service Personal Data Cleanup, which sends requests to remove your data automatically.

If the thought of your personal info getting bought and sold in such a public way bothers you, our Personal Data Cleanup can put you back in charge of it.