Think of it if you will of all the different entities that have to be licensed and this makes sense.  What if stock brokers were not licensed?  Could you imagine the havoc we would live with on top of what we already experience?  My campaign here does not stop data distribution and selling but rather is in the interest of transparency.  We have NONE right now and it’s getting worse all the time.  The problems lie when others reference flawed data about us and I’ve been there and now that the concept of “data flipping” has taken hold it’s worse.  Company A sells a data base with you in it to Company B.  Company has an in house data base and they query and merge it with the data base they bought from company A.  Now you have a new data base.  If this data base contains “scoring” of consumers, well you have new data to sell. Read up on the concerns of the World Privacy Forum and see their warning as this is not happening in the huge numbers that it is in the US, and thus they called their report “The Secret Scoring of America”.  It’s all companies do anymore is buy and sell data and there’s not a lot of interest in manufacturing any more.

World Privacy Forum Report - The Scoring of America: How Secret Consumer Scores Threaten Your Privacy and Your Future - One Big Element that Fuels the Continued Attack of Killer Algorithms & Demise of the Middle Class Creating Profiteering And/Or Denial of Access

Back to company B now they sell this new data base to Company C and they merge it with data that they have on hand or have purchased.  You’ve already been flipped twice now.  See how this works and the process just keeps repeating itself over and over and over and the data gets flawed.  If you have erroneous entries you are on your own ticket to try and trace this back and once you have been flipped a couple times, good luck as you can’t do it, been there done that.  At least a couple weeks ago I did get Senator Warren’s office reading about the hospital that wants doctors to rummage through your Master Card records.  It’s an addiction as people think they can never get enough data and just keep collecting it and don’t know when they have enough to make a decision. 

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Master Card is on a real tear to make money selling data and last year they were bragging about it a couple of times in the news about their ecommerce center.  I wrote it up and warned all what was coming.  Do you wonder why credit cards are easier to get?  They have a side business of selling data that makes up for losses so the defaults are not that risky.  There’s other credit cards doing the same and they make billions selling data.  Even Walgreens pulls in at least a billion a year of revenue from just selling data.

What we need is a law that requires folks to buy a license and along with that some transparency with a list of what kind of data they sell and distribute and to who, as we at least need a look up capability somewhere along the line as consumers.  It will also pull some folks out from under the carpet as well.   Here’s a guest post from a doctor recently on the same topic and they know what’s going on as they get shorted on credit cards too from the other side. 

Why Patients Cannot Trust Their Insurer, Government, Hospital or Credit Card Company - guest post

That’s what this campaign is all about, transparency and giving consumers some information so we know where to go when the data gets flawed and we get “scored” and denied access.  This is not just about data brokers, they are part of it but we have banks, companies, etc. all cashing in and why build manufacturing plant when you can make big profits with no risk selling data?  That’s what’s going on. 

You can read more here and I’ve been working on this for a couple of years already with writing to a lawyer at the FTC and some members of Congress to make this happen.  Again this is about transparency and indexing who’s selling data.  With all the security breaches we do need an index and again now that “data flipping” is getting larger, it will get worse and it keep the rate of inequality accelerated.

VCs fund companies all the time that have a data selling business model as they want to see an ROI as fast as they can a lot of times and data selling is it. 

Please kick in a few dollars as it would really help me out to keep this going as believe me, it will get worse and the transparency move here is to license and identify the sellers and give us a look up so when things get flawed weimage know where to start looking, we don’t have that now at all and the flawed data is growing as well as proprietary garbage models that score you as well and so much of it’s a secret.  I would much rather look at a list of folks that some apps sells the data to rather than to look at the stupid privacy statement that nobody can understand on some of the sites, and keep in mind, it’s designed that way on purpose, to make money.  Click on the image at the right, and see what’ that’s all about too, see why a license is needed as that will be all secret. 

Here’s the campaign and pitch in and help me get this going faster so we can get a law on the books for transparency sakes.  BD 

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