The opt out brigade
The talk around Washington is building to legitimize stealing our data. The cross hairs of bureaucracy as usual is in the wrong place this time its online data brokers. Those that are in the open market selling information are offering opt-out links for consumers to the various sites. This is to appease the powers in Washington and has nothing to do with reality. Often the sellers are the only ones seen with product. This logic is that so as long as the seller isn’t visible there is no problem. Our issues run much deeper than a few websites selling our data.
The suppliers of our information are all around us.
- The credit card merchant services that steal our information and then sell it.
- The website tracker companies that record what sites we go to.
- The various loyalty card programs that we have actually given our permission to share information but not sell it.
- The application’s on our cellular devices that report where we go.
And a few more…
Most of these sell the information to the warehouses of information. Some you know as the credit reporting companies. Others are also brokers of information that sell information to anyone willing to pay the price.
It you have some spare time and would like to opt out of the 250 online data brokers individually here is a link to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse