But confirming the source of the alleged data theft has proven inconclusive, such is the nature of the data broker industry, which gobbles up individuals’ personal data from disparate sources with little to no quality control.
But this alleged breach of a data broker appears to be an outlier, in part because some of the data appears genuine and some already verified.
The proliferation and commoditization of personal data across the data broker industry also makes it more challenging to identify the source of data leaks.
And even if this particular data breach remains unsolved, it shows once more that the data broker industry is out of control and poses real privacy issues to ordinary people.
We couldn’t definitively solve the mystery of this data breach, but there was enough there to detail our verification efforts.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has continued its crackdown on data brokers with a settlement banning data aggregation company InMarket from selling consumers’ precise location data.
Texas-based InMarket, which debuted as CheckPoints at TechCrunch Disrupt 2010, provides a marketing platform that collects sensitive consumer data — including location data, purchasing history, and demographic information — which brands and advertising agencies use to facilitate targeted advertising on mobile devices.
Based on the data that InMarket collects, brands can target shoppers who are likely to be low-income millennials or Christian churchgoers, according to the FTC.
In its proposed order unveiled Thursday, the FTC accused InMarket of failing to obtain users’ consent before using their location data for marketing and advertising purposes.
That order marked the first time the regulator struck a deal to prohibit a company from selling sensitive location data.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has banned the data broker X-Mode Social from sharing or selling users’ sensitive location data, the federal regulator said Tuesday.
The settlement will also require the data broker to delete or destroy all the location data it previously collected, along with any products produced from this data, unless the company obtains consumer consent or ensures the data has been de-identified.
X-Mode buys and sells access to the location data collected from ordinary phone apps.
While just one of many organizations in the multibillion-dollar data broker industry, X-Mode faced scrutiny for selling access to the commercial location data of Americans’ past movements to the U.S. government and military contractors.
Since its inception, X-Mode has imposed strict contractual terms on all data customers prohibiting them from associating its data with sensitive locations such as healthcare facilities.
