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What Do Data Broker Sites Know About Your Health and Wellness?

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Your medical records and health data are usually protected. Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA , there are strict regulations about how your health information should be handled, and who can access it. Despite this, data broker sites and marketers know more than you would think about your medical history, often using targeted marketing that seems too accurate to not have your medical records on hand. From apps to internet searches, online tests to your wearable health device, your information is tracked and used for marketing. Online Depression Tests Share Your Answers You probably expect your movements across the internet to be tracked by the likes of Google and Facebook, using “cookies” as identifiers. You would assume, however, that health information would be protected against this. Instead, Privacy International found that online depression tests on popular mental health websites were sharing the answers with third parties.
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Think Credit Cards Don’t Mine Personal Information? Think Again

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Credit cards make buying anything from groceries to electronics easy, whether it’s online or in-person. You might assume that what you purchased, for how much, and where is information known only to you and your bank or credit card lender. Unfortunately, your information gets shared much more widely than that.  Who Gets Your Info? Obviously, your credit card provider gets information about your purchase. This could be a bank, or it could be a retailer such as Target or Amazon. When Washington Post tech writer Geoffrey A. Fowler bought a banana at Target with this Amazon credit card, he found that the information was also shared with marketers , Google, hedge funds, and possibly more. Mobile wallets and financial apps can capture and use your data. If you slide your card through a point-of-sale machine, such as a Square device, they also receive your information. What Are They Doing with Your Info? Why do they want all of this info? What are they doing with it?
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Why Would Data Broker Sites and Other Organizations Pay for Your Data?

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Data broker sites buy and sell your personal information on a daily basis. But why do these data broker sites and other organizations pay for your data? Well, there are a few primary industries that use this data for profit. Here are some of the reasons they’re paying for and want your personal information. People Search Sites Buy and Sell Data Directly People search sites such as MyLife, Spokeo, and Whitepages provide personal information they have collected for free or a small fee. This often includes your name, phone number, addresses past and present, email, hobbies, occupation, property records, and more. These data broker sites can be used to research a person and often come up in Google searches. However, because of the extensive information provided, they can also be used for “doxing” (maliciously revealing identifying information publicly) or stalking, and the information could help someone attempt to commit identity theft. This is why many people choose to opt-out, a
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What’s the Difference Between Data Breaches and Data Broker Sites Selling Information?

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It may seem that it’s every couple of months that another major company suffers from a data breach, but what is contained in these breaches? In the information age, where data broker sites collect extensive records on people, is the data available anyway? Does knowing  how to remove personal information from Google  help? Here are the differences between data broker sites and data breaches and what you can do to keep your personal information private.  What Data Is Contained in Breaches vs Data Broker Sites? Data broker sites generally collect public information on you. This includes your name, age, addresses, relationships, phone number, email address, photos, and social media accounts. It can also include the make and model of your car, your hobbies, and your occupation. Anonymous data may be collected too, including health statistics. A data breach, meanwhile, can be of any data an entity collects from you. A credit card data breach from a major retailer will likely contain
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Apps and Sites That You Didn’t Know Are Selling Your Data

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It might come as a surprise what sites or apps act as data broker sites, collecting and selling your personal information—often without your direct knowledge. Knowing how to remove personal information from Google can help, as can being proactive and not providing more information than necessary.  Credit Bureaus Credit bureaus, as a matter of course, collect information to provide a credit score. They sell this information in two significant ways: borrower history and pre-approval marketing. The first sees credit bureaus selling your transaction information, with a history of your debt payments. If you missed a car payment one month, it’s in your file. Lenders pay more for these reports, as it helps them decide whether to offer you, for example, a mortgage loan. The credit bureaus include analytics on your payment history, so buyers can see how you interact with your various debts. The second way that credit bureaus sell your information is in pre-approval lists
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Protecting Your Children’s Online Privacy

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Protecting your children’s information online can be a challenge. They may not understand how sensitive data is, freely offering information such as their name, age, or address to strangers without a second thought. Knowing how to remove personal information from Google helps, and there are steps you can take to prevent your child’s information from spreading online.     Opt Out of Data Broker Sites Your first order of business is opting out of data broker sites to remove any information about your children that is already online. Opting out with individual data broker sites means information removal from Whitepages , MyLife, Spokeo, and more. Data broker sites buy and sell information from names to family members, from addresses to phone numbers. By opting out, they are not allowed to do this, and the information is removed. You can find guides online to do this manually or hire a service like DeleteMe to do the time-consuming work for you. Federal regulations pr
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What Is the Dark Web?

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A good portion of the internet is not accessible through search engines like Google or Bing. Some of these are obvious: your webmail client, your social media accounts, your online banking accounts, your bank statements, content hidden behind paywalls, and the like. Others are deindexed by search engines intentionally. And still, others are, by design, not indexed. This is the deep web.  The dark web is a subset of websites where (often) illegal activities take place. If you don’t know how to remove personal information from Google searches, it’s possible that data broker sites have collected and sold your personal details. The buyer might have posted your name, address, and other personally identifiable data on the dark web.  What Is the Dark Web Used for? The dark web is often hidden behind encryptions and sometimes can only be accessed by particular browsers. Behind this veil of secrecy, drugs, stolen credit card numbers, personal information, and more are boug
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