Many people have no idea that their information is being tracked and recorded. Data brokers and the mailing list industry are very interested in, who you are and what you do. Data brokers if you have never heard of them are companies that buy and sell information about all of us. Everyone living in the United States has a record with one or more data brokers. When most news organization talk about data brokers, generally they describe only the companies operating on the internet selling personal information. That is very far from describing the overall problem.
There are a lot of companies selling your information and some of them you have heard of. A few also sell credit reports. Some others run websites devised to collect information. Some advertise services on television and the radio. Almost all of these companies and many more are collecting and selling as much as they can about your life. You can tell if you are in the system very easily. If you have ever received junk mail or spam it indicates you are participating.
Some people falsely believe that they live an uninteresting life and no one would be interested. Data brokers thrive on ignorance and complacency. That is for them just another data point; something else to sell about whom they have collected data. To data brokers there is no uninteresting life; every activity is gathered, sorted and sold. There are some very large companies that buy all forms of information about everyone.
Fortunately for most of the companies out there, not everything is accurate or even close to correct. By now you have heard friends or relatives complain that their credit report was incorrect. In the collection of everything about you, there are many inaccuracies. This is true for almost all of us.
The data brokers are hoping that you will correct your information for them. The only question is why would you want to do that? Now is the time to disrupt your data. You have been told to never look for things on the internet that you are not interested in. And by all means never click on an advertiser’s link for something you have no interest in buying. It is impolite to buy things in stores with your credit card that you have no interest in, just to return them. Stores that participate in selling your information deserve it. This is the system of disruption, altering your records of what you do, what you buy and how you live.
The ones that are the most vulnerable are your children. Data brokers are desperate to collect who they are and as much as they can about them. There is little data out there and schools are restricted on the amount of information they can disclose. The answer for the industry is free games and cell phone apps. Right now Silicon Valley is working in over drive. Scores of computer programmers and game developers are being hired. It is the cell phone apps and games for any platform market place. The driving force behind it is the 10 billion dollar a year industry of the data brokers.
Your children are at the greatest of risk; their names are not published everywhere yet. Make sure that you tell them when playing any form of game to never even give their own first name. Encourage them to tell the internet they have imaginary pets and different families. Games are designed to specific age groups for a reason; some may collect just a first name and the age of your child. Most play games in the privacy of your own home, connected to a device that has the same outside ip-address, on the same home network as you.