In conclusion
US Senator Maggie Hassan demanded that the corporations disclose their policies and promise to provide access to privacy controls after reporters discovered that hundreds of companies were concealing privacy tools from search results.
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WIRED is a copublisher of this story.
After an investigation by The Markup/CalMatters and copublished by WIRED revealed that at least 35 companies concealed opt-out information from search results, making it more difficult for individuals to take control of their own data and protect their privacy online, US Senator Maggie Hassan is putting pressure on major data brokers.
Five of the leading companies—IQVIA Digital, Comscore, Telesign Corporation, 6sense Insights, and Findemon—were served notice on Wednesday by Hassan, the top Democrat on the Joint Economic Committee, requiring them to provide an explanation for why coding on their websites seems to be intended to thwart deletion demands.
WIRED’s request for comment was not immediately answered by any of the companies. Requests for comment during the probe were not previously answered by any.
The study discovered that dozens of registered brokers were concealing their opt-out options from Google and other search results, despite California law requiring brokers to give a method to remove personal data. A design decision that, in the opinion of California’s privacy regulator, erodes consumer autonomy, decision-making, or choice when claiming their privacy rights or agreeing may be considered an illegal dark pattern. Consumer advocates referred to it as a smart workaround that compromises private rights.
According to Hassan, the companies must defend the positioning of their opt-out pages, admit if they used code to prevent search indexing and, if so, against how many users, promise to remove any such code by September 3, and report to Congress on any recent audit findings and actions taken to enhance user access since the investigation.
According to Hassan, who cited other strategies used by the companies to force users to navigate through multiple screens, ignore unnecessary pop-ups, and search for links in shrunken text, data brokers and other online providers have an obligation to prevent the misuse of consumer data, and Americans deserve to know if and how their personal information is being used.
In the background, data brokers support a multibillion-dollar business that deals in intimate personal data that is frequently collected without an individual’s knowledge or consent. They create extensive dossiers that are frequently filled with detailed location histories, political opinions, and religious affiliations. They then sell and resell these profiles, which are used to power everything from law enforcement surveillance to hyper-targeted advertisements.
Fewer Americans yet understand the full scope of this monitoring ecosystem or how it might affect, influence, or invade their lives, even among the small percentage who are aware of its existence.
The Trump administration quietly shelved a planned rule earlier this year that would have treated some brokers as consumer reporting agencies under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, severely restricting their ability to collect and sell American data. Concurrently, contract documents reveal that the US intelligence community is putting together a centralized marketplace to expedite the acquisition of commercially available data, granting agencies collective access to sizable databases of sensitive data without the need for court orders that are typically necessary for conventional surveillance.
The hazards are severe for victims of sexual assault, domestic abuse, and stalking. According to the National Network to End Domestic Violence Safety Net Project, opting out is already a difficult, piecemeal process that requires people to contact companies one at a time, navigate difficult-to-find forms, and repeatedly submit deletion requests as information is re-collected and re-listed. Data brokers also gather and sell vast amounts of information that can put survivors at risk.
“These companies have an obligation to make the tools that enable Americans to exercise their right to privacy easy to find and use, rather than making people navigate complex mazes to protect their personal information,” Hassan told WIRED.
The executive director of Demand Progress, a nonprofit advocacy group that criticizes the business, Sean Vitka, likened the surveillance ecology that underpins commercial data markets to the tangled tails of a rat king, an unbreakable web of entities maintained by unregulated data flows. He claimed that although the harm caused by data brokers takes many forms, it is all made possible by the same predatory misuse of customer information.
Furthermore, the industry cannot be relied upon to lessen its own negative effects, which is in line with what we are witnessing.
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