What you need to know: Law enforcement across the US, particularly in large cities, are utilizing sophisticated surveillance and crime solving tools like license plate readers, cellphone trackers, drones and facial recognition software, among other technologies. The US has approximately 70 million surveillance cameras installed- which equates to 4.6 people per installed
What you need to know: Departments of Motor Vehicles (DMVs) across the country sell driver data to third parties that include large institutions like employers, law firms, credit reporting agencies, financial institutions and data brokers but also to small businesses and individuals like private investigators, tow companies, bail bond firms and bounty
What you need to know: USPS keeps a database of your previous address changes and sells your new address data to data brokers and retailers provided they have your old address. This allows companies that have your address (which data brokers generally do through other sources) to perpetually have up to date
What you need to know: Credit bureaus collect personal information (like name, address, date of birth, SSN) from public records along with financial history from financial institutions like credit cards, mortgages, car payments, student loans and increasingly from alternative sources like phone/electric bills, rent and other payments to short-term or low value
What you need to know: Many government records (local, state and federal) are public by law, and these records are increasingly becoming digitized and easily accessible. These records are generally either available through a public database or sold to commercial data compilers aka data brokers. Types of public government records that contain your personal
What you need to know: Data brokers are in the business of collecting, combining and analyzing thousands of data points on you and selling that information to corporations, marketers, investors and even private individuals. The data brokerage industry is estimated to generate about $200 billion in annual revenue. These companies collect data