Data brokers and scrapers feast on freely divulged personal data

from USA Today
Byron Acohido



Freely divulging information about yourself on Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and other websites causes your personal data to feed directly into the lucrative business models of information brokers and data scrapers, as a newly-released video from identity management firm Reputation.com vividly depicts. Technology Live asked Michael Fertik, founder and CEO of Reputation.com, to elaborate on the drivers behind this rapidly emerging peice of our digital ecomony.

TL: Why did Reputation.com decide to do the video?

Fertik: The current architecture of the Web has created a privacy horror show for individuals. Everyday we input vast amounts of information online—whether its personal information such as social security number, home address, household income range, age range, political leaning, gender and age of children, financial and health records, or seemingly innocuous web site visits, connections to friends, searches, tweets, comments, posts, or "likes" of restaurants and hobbies.

(More here.)