If you could go back to the early days of the internet, would you handle your privacy differently? Most of us would. We would be more cautious about the services we joined and the information we shared. Since a time machine is not an option, we have to deal with the reality of the present. Your personal data is currently available and for sale at this very moment.
Right now, your phone number, email address, home address, and even your family connections are being packaged and sold to marketers, insurers, and hackers. While Apple’s privacy protections in Safari and Mail help block some tracking as you browse the web, they cannot undo years of information already scraped and spread across hundreds of broker databases. Data brokers have built a multi-billion-dollar industry by collecting your digital data, packaging it, and selling it. It’s time to take your personal information off the market and off the internet. Let’s look at how.
The security risks of data brokerage
The danger goes far beyond annoying spam calls, though. When your information is everywhere, you become a low-hanging fruit for sophisticated cyber threats. Because the industry is largely unregulated, your most private information and details, including past employment and where you have lived, previous loans, etc are readily available for purchase. This creates a massive security liability.
