Report Outlines Best Practices for Data Broker Industry -

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released its report, Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability, based on an in-depth study of nine data brokers, which the FTC defines as companies that collect consumers’ personal information and resell or share that information with others. The report calls for increased regulation and new consumer protection legislation, to address the FTC’s concerns about consumer privacy. The FTC also called on the data broker industry to adopt the FTC’s best practice recommendations.

In December 2012, the FTC initiated a study of data broker practices and issued Orders, pursuant to section 6(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act, to nine data brokers seeking information about their data collection and use practices. Thenine data brokers that received the Orders are Acxiom, Corelogic, Datalogix, eBureau, ID Analytics, Intelius, PeekYou, Rapleaf, and Recorded Future. The Data Brokers report summarizes the detailed information provided by the nine data brokers, including the nature and sources of consumer data they collect; how they use, maintain and disseminate data; and the extent to which the data brokers allow consumers to access and correct data about them...