2. Data Sharing
● A lot of companies and brokers claim to only
share data that is public
● This includes your
○ Name
○ Age
○ Occupation
● The purpose is supposedly used to prevent
Identity Fraud
● However this is false and this is not
everything that is sold
3. Data Sharing
● There is a new trend emerging called “consumer
scores”
● Scores are computer generated scores used to
predict when one is going to get sick or pay off
debt
● The scores are taken from purchases we’ve made
online
● Similar to FICO credit scores, but they are not as
regulated
4. What Goes Into a Consumer Score?
● Thousands of factors can be added into
one’s consumer score
1. How much merchandise online you buy
2. Much frequent your online
3. Your ethnicity (which can be guessed based on
computer history)
4. Data can be taken from various sources,
Facebook, IG, Twitter, Tumblr, Online
shopping websites
5. Data Sharing
● Newsweek quotes “We’re living in a
world where businesses and important
life opportunities are being decided
based on this amalgamated data”
● Most colleges and universities use
bought data to figure out which students
to advertise to based on educated
guesses of if they can pay the full four
years
● Not just large companies using data
sharing
6. Data Sharing
● Another example of a company using data sharing is
Health Care Companies
● They use data gathered on how much you spend
online shopping to determine how much they believe
they can charge you for health care
● A quote from Newsweek reads, “A major national health
plan came to the quants wanting to know how they could figure
out how much to charge people. If a woman did a lot of online
shopping, she was predicted to be a much higher health risk. If a
couple bought hiking boots, that was considered a good factor. I
doubt that when someone goes online to buy a scarf they think,
‘This is going to affect my healthcare.’
7. Data Sharing
● Although it makes sense from a business perspective for a company to collect
data, is it ethically and morally okay?
● The problems include
○ The data is not always correct, a study showed that only about 50% of data collected is accurate
○ Most consumers do not know about their data being shared
○ Most importantly there is nothing the consumer can do about their data being shared
8. Works Cited
Boutin, Paul. "There's Very Little Oversight in the Industry of Data Brokers."
Newsweek. N.p., 16 June 2016. Web. 17 July 2017.
