It's been about 2 years with me blogging about my campaign to get Congress to pass a bill to license and excise tax the data sellers like Walgreens who pulls in about a billion a year, just selling data.
I'm all over the FTC on this as well, because when you look at all the laws and proposed bills to regulate privacy and data selling (and yes you cannot discuss one and leave the other out, they are tied at the hip) you need an index to identify who they are as well as a federal site to where they would be required to keep a listing updated on what kinds of data they sell and to who. No license, you can' sell data would be the first line of regulation, not much different than not having a license to drive a car and all of us that drive are in an index...aka called getting a license:)
So here's my next chapter and it was good timing since Senator Rockefeller is once again attacking this issue, which is really an epidemic as I say, it's the wild west out there with banks, insurers and corporations working it to make millions and billions and they have best deal going out there with "free labor" and that would be us when the data is flawed. Why us, because we are denied access and we have to fix it or we are stuck.
Here's part of the last chapter...and yes I wrote to Senator Rockefeller and Elizabeth Warren as well...this is so hard for people to understand because you can't see it except in your bank account when you wonder where did all the money go..in other words it's a little at a time that has built up into a huge process.
Senator Rockefeller Puts the Data Sellers on Notice–We Need to Index and License All Data Sellers to Include Banks, Insurers And Other Companies In Addition to the Data Brokers..
"Underbanked consumers"..who created that term, bankers of course. You hit on one of my campaigns and the poor are hit worse but everybody is getting it to include what's left of the middle class too. It's not only the data brokers but gee you have banks making billions selling your data, Larry Ellison even said that we should worry about what banks and companies do first and put the NSA issue at #2. Think of it, banks have 30 years of credit card data to sell and they are doing it, selling it to insurance companies, Blue Cross and United to name a couple. You have heard it from me for two years here, Larry Ellison and now Senator Rockefeller about the data selling epidemic.
The excuse from Blue Cross was pretty wimpy as they said they get charge card records to monitor and see if any of their policy holders are starting to buy clothes a size larger so they can stay on top of obesity and rush out to get in your face; however, what if the receipts are not clothes for you, duh? They use for every other kind of query of course and we know that.
Insurance Companies Are Buying Up Consumer Spending Data-Time is Here to License and Tax the Data Sellers-As Insurers Sell Tons of Data, Gets Flawed Data When Data Buyers Uses Out of Context Too
Insurance Companies Are Buying Up Consumer Spending Data-Time is Here to License and Tax the Data Sellers-As Insurers Sell Tons of Data, Gets Flawed Data When Data Buyers Uses Out of Context Too
It's an epidemic with easy money to be made and the buyers and sellers don't care if the data is bad as they have a free labor pool to fix it, us as we get stuck with no access if the data is wrong and have to fix it and they just keep on selling and making millions and billions, i.e. Walgreens make about a billion a year selling data so you figure out easily enough what banks are making..billions. Here’s more on how MasterCard is getting ready to see how they can use more data to generate more fees…
We need to license and excise tax all data sellers as you will never have any privacy laws work until this is addressed as the two are connected. It's because of the data selling easy money that privacy is so hard to come by. Content of this post link below and a lot more has been sent by me to the FTC.
FTC “Reclaim Your Name Campaign” Not Good Enough–No Path for Regulation Identified–All Data Sellers Including Banks, Insurers, Etc. Should Be Required to Buy a License
The players are not just limited to Acxiom, Experian, Epsilon, Reed Elsevier, Equifax, TransUnion, Rapleaf, Spokeo, and Datalogix.....we need an index and buying a license to sell data would accomplish that. After all you need a license to drive a car, work at a doctor, sell stock, sell real estate, imagedo hair, nails, and so on. This is one of the biggest rips hurting consumers and they can't see it, touch it or talk to it as the formulas and math models all run on server 24/7 and do the work as they are coded to do.
A couple years ago when the Occupy movement started, I said this is what it is all about, "The Attack of the Killer Algorithms" made possible by a lot of Algo Duping. I even have an Algo Duping page now with videos done by people smarter than me that are there to educate.
Attack of the Killer Algorithms – “Algo Duping 101″
There's even a game looking for crowd funding to exploit how bad this is...video is pretty good, play "Data Dealer", "buy and sell the medical records purchased from a disgruntled nurse, set up websites and scrape and mine data, break in to other data miners sites and steal their data, just build it and they will come, insurance companies, banks, and so on"...If you like the video, they have a demo game here…if the data selling epidemic was not so horrific, this game would not exist.
Yes they are hawking on the poor and the middle class too and it's using technology and over segmentation to design for inequality to grow..sadly it's all modeled that way and time for all to wake up to that fact, including government as they are behind this 8 ball all the time as we lose because of that. This by the way is a big part of what keeps inequality going, it’s all math models and algorithms that execute. And we are blessed with yet another algorithmic math illit with the consumer protection agency too, gave him a chance but so far other than a couple small battles, Richard Cordray head of consumer financial protection agency is a big fail as he wants to build data bases now and learn and we are stuck again with someone like this running the consumer finance agency.
I get long winded at times as I try to explain everything but I can't, but I still try at times. In addition I just did another post you might want to look at as well...and this has to to with automated news reporting and don't think the journalists are not all over this one and for good reason and you may or many not know it but some of the stats you read and their interpretations are created by bots..Forbes built a platform to do that and now are trying to sell Forbes media so sometimes you an article written by a human and the next time it's bot..and they program the bots to look selected types of content too so keep that in mind..here's that one if you want to see the rise and fall of the machines here too..just awareness..
Quantitated Justification For Believing Things That Are Not True And Using Mathematical Processes To Fool Ourselves-The Journalistic Bot Functionality Debuts As Media Can’t Resist the Formulas…
Here's a preview from one of the clips I used in the post...you'll never look at stats you see in the news the same again .