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Are There Weak Links In The Data Broker Chain?

The multibillion-dollar data brokering industry is not only growing rapidly, but the chains of data buyers and sellers are getting longer and longer. Sellers of consumer marketing data, from industry giants like Acxiom and ChoicePoint down to companies that sell marketing lists online, swear they take every precaution to protect the data they hold and sell it only to businesses that won't misuse the information or leave it vulnerable to theft. But one has to wonder at what point the chains become so long that the links become weak and the promises of those at the top are no longer honored.

I wrote a story for this week's issue of InformationWeek that uncovers how many organizations, from publishing companies to educational institutions to federal, state, and local governments, are buying and selling data. What particularly surprised me was not just how much data is being bought and sold, but how many times data is sold, resold, then resold again.

The InformationWeek article includes the story of Kate del Solar, who recently received notice from Sacred Heart University that her personal information, including her Social Security number, was subject to identity theft because of a computer security breach at the school in May. But del Solar doesn't attend the school and didn't even apply there. While it's still not clear how the school got her information, one possible source was the College Board consortium that administers the Scholastic Aptitude Test and sells student data to schools.

It's incidents like this that increasingly have consumers asking, "Who has my data and what are they doing with it?" As the chains of data brokers grow longer, businesses can expect to hear that question a lot more.

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