Data brokers face new pressure to hide pages to refuse Google

From CalMatters staffCalmness

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The United States Senator Maggie Hassan is pressing large data brokers after investigating from Marking/ /Calmatters and Copublised by Wired They found at least 35 companies, hid information about the refusal of demand results, which makes it difficult for people to take control of their own data and to protect their privacy online.

Hassan, the best Democrat in the Joint Economic Committee, put five of the best companies -IQVIA Digital, Comscore, Telesign Corporation, 6Sense Insights and Findem –On Wednesday’s noticeRequireing everyone to explain why the code of their sites seems to be designed to thwart the deletion requests.

None of the companies immediately respond to Wired’s request for comment. None before that, did not respond to requests for comment during the investigation.

California law requires brokers to provide a way to delete personal data; However, the investigation found dozens of registered brokers that darken their refusal tools by hiding them from Google and other search results. Consumer defenders called it a “smart job” that undermines privacy rights and can qualify as illegal dark pattern– Product design that, according to the privacy regulator, erodes users “Autonomy, decision -making or choice when they uphold their privacy or consent rights”.

Hassan wants companies to justify the placement of their refusal pages; Confirm if they used a code to block search indexing and, if so, against how many users; a promise to remove each such code until September 3; And give the congress recent audit results and steps taken after the investigation, if any, to improve users’ access.

“Data brokers and other online providers are responsible for preventing the misuse of consumer data, and Americans deserve to understand whether and how their personal information is used,” Hassan wrote, citing other tactics different from companies, to make consumers through multiple screens, and reject the hoods.

Behind the scenes, data brokers nourish a multianner industry, which is traded with detailed personal information-often collected without the knowledge or consent of a person. They make up scattered files, often filled with precision location stories, political slopes and religious accessories, then sell and resold these profiles, feeding everything from hyper -ads to enforcement.

Even among the small share of Americans who know that this ecosystem exists, still seeing its true scale – or the ways in which it can shape, influence or impress on its life.

Earlier this year the Trump Administration Quietly abandoned the proposed rule This would have a sharp restricted collection of brokers and the sale of data to Americans, treating certain brokers such as “consumer reporting agencies” under the Fair Credit Act. At the same time, contract documents Show that the US intelligence community is preparing a centralized market to optimize the purchases of commercially available data – agencies to supply agencies share access to large repositories with sensitive information, without court orders that are otherwise required for traditional observation.

For survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and lurking, the risks are acute. National Network for Domestic Violence Termination Network safety project warns That data brokers collect and sell huge amounts of information that it can put to the survivors at risk, adding that the refusal is already loaded, in pieces of process, forcing people to contact companies one by one, to find it difficult to find forms, and to re -erase requests.

“Instead of requiring people to navigate the Byzantine maze to protect their personal information, these companies are responsible for making the tools that allow Americans to exercise their right to confidentiality easily and use,” Hassan told Wired.

Sean Vita, the CEO of the search for the progress, a non -profit advocacy group, critical of the industry, compares the ecosystem of the observation that underlies the markets of commercial data with the knit queues of a rat king – an integral knit of subjects maintained by unverified flows of data. “The damage caused by data brokers is manifested in countless ways,” he said, “but all this is activated by the same predatory abuse of users’ data.”

“And in accordance with what we see here, in the industry one cannot believe to soften its own harm.”

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.