CHAPTER 8: COMPARISONS – PRIVATE SECTOR ACTIVITY
and US. This provides select access to advertisers about the topics being
discussed by Facebook users.
Data brokers
8.68.
Data brokers are companies which collect consumers’ personal information and resell
or share that information with others. They collect this information from commercial,
government and publicly available sources, often analysing it to make certain
inferences about customers before selling it to clients. Examples of data brokers
include Datalogix and Acxiom.8
8.69.
The lack of transparency relating to this type of company led to a study of nine data
brokers by the Federal Trade Commission in the US in 2014. The study found:
“Data brokers acquire a vast array of detailed and specific information about
consumers, analyze it to make inferences about consumers, some of which
may be considered sensitive; and share the information with clients in a range
of industries. All of this activity takes place behind the scenes, without
consumers’ knowledge.”9
8.70.
Specific findings included that seven out of the nine data brokers shared data with
other data brokers providing “a detailed composite of the consumer’s life.”10 The
database of one of the data brokers investigated covered one trillion dollars in
consumer transactions.
8.71.
In April 2015, the ICO launched an investigation into UK firms sharing pension,
medical and financial data.11
Data protection
8.72.
The rules and guidance set out in DPA 1998 and consumer protection law are
intended to protect individuals from unfair use of such data. However, the House of
Commons Science and Technology Committee recently expressed doubt about the
ability of current legislation to deal with data passing over digital platforms.12 A draft
EU Regulation and Directive, introduced in 2012 with the aim of providing rules “to
catch up with the digital age”, are still being negotiated by Member States.13
8
Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability (May 2014).
Ibid., p. vii.
Ibid., p.11.
See the announcement on the ICO website: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/newsand-blogs/2015/04/ico-to-make-enquiries-about-sale-of-pension-data/.
Responsible Use of Data, HC 245 (November 2014), p. 3.
See the European Commission Factsheet, “Data Protection Day 2015: Concluding the EU Data
Protection Reform essential for the Digital Single Market”, 28 January 2015. The CMA is currently
carrying out an inquiry into a number of issues relating to the commercial use of consumer data,
including consumer understanding about the collection of data and how consumer data are
aggregated, bought and sold.
9
10
11
12
13
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