Top US Consumer Watchdog Has a Plan to Fight Predatory Data Brokers

The United States government’s leading consumer protection watchdog announced Tuesday the first steps in a plan to crack down on predatory data broker practices that the agency says help fuel scams, violence, and threats to US national security. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is proposing a rule that would allow regulators to police data brokers under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a landmark privacy law enacted more than a half century ago. Under the proposal, data brokers would be limited in their ability to sell certain sensitive personal information, including financial data and credit scores, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, and addresses. “The CFPB’s proposed rule will curtail these practices that threaten our personal safety and undermine America’s national security.” Passed in 1970 as the first US privacy law, the FCRA requires “credit reporting agencies” to adhere to certain standards of accuracy and privacy in their dealing with people’s financial information, including credit histories, credit scores, debt payment histories, and other related data. “Data brokers, the outfits that collect and sell detailed information about our personal and financial lives, are making this data available to anyone willing to pay a price.” The action proposed by the CFPB is aimed, Chopra says, at stopping data brokers from “enabling scammers, stalkers and spies undermining our personal safety and America's national security.”