A Data Broker's (aka known as information brokers) are businesses that gather information from a variety of different mediums for the purpose of advertising, educational reasons, or finical gain. While most consumers are aware of giant tech companies Google and Apple collecting data on its users, many do not know there are over 121 Data Brokers that operator in the U.S. bringing in over 200 billion a year in revenue ^[1].

Data Brokers began in the early stages gathering information on individuals by seeing what newspapers and magazine subscriptions you were subscribed to. In today society the information gathered is much more detailed. Information on individuals can be gathered from

• Social media
• Web history
• Credit card information
• Cellphone (Smartphone) Data

The types of data that brokers collect and sell includes, among others:

• Full name
• Address of residence (and previous addresses)
• Telephone numbers
• Email addresses
• Age and gender
• Social security number
• Income
• Education
• Occupation

Data harvested from these sources allow business to create profiles in order to advertise directly to a persons interest and/or enhance their own technological capabilities.

Although it is public knowledge that big tech companies and data brokers are collecting your information, it is not clearly known who the data is being sold to and what is being done with the information. Many of the techniques used to gather individuals data has lead many to feel as if they were being spied on. Amazon Alexa, and Googles assistant are a few electronic devices that have the capability to listen to their users unknowing to them and catalog the information.

References

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