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Data brokers face a new pressure to hide the Google opt-out pages

Senator of the United States Maggie Hassan is pressing the main data brokers after an investigation The markup/Calm down And Copublished from Wired found at least 35 companies that hid information from the search results, making it more difficult for people to take control of their data and safeguard their online privacy.

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Hassan, the democratic maximum of the joint Economic Committee, has put five of the best companies: Iqvia Digital, Comscore, Telesign Corporation, 6Sense Insights and Finderem—on notice WednesdayAsking that everyone explains why the code on their sites appeared to be designed to frustrate the requests for elimination.

None of the companies immediately replied to Wired’s commentary request. Nobody had previously responded to requests for comment during the investigation.

The California law requires brokers to provide a way to eliminate personal data; However, the investigation found dozens of recorded brokers who obscure their opt-out tools by hiding them from Google and other search results. Consumer supporters have called him an “intelligent work” which undermines privacy rights and can qualify as unlegance Dark model—A Design decision that, according to the California privacy regulator, erodes the consumer “Autonomy, decision -making process or chosen when they affirm their rights to privacy or consent.”

Hassan wants companies to justify the positioning of their Opt -out pages; Recognize if they used the code to block the search for research and, in this case, by how many users; Commitment to remove this code by 3 September; And provide the Congress with the recent results of Audit and the measures taken by the investigation, if present, to improve user access.

“Data brokers and other online providers have the responsibility of preventing the improper use of consumer data and Americans deserve to understand if and how their personal information is used,” Hassan wrote, citing other tactics used in a differently used way by companies, forcing users to scroll through multiple screens, rejecting more unnecessary pop-ups and hunts for reminiscent text connections.

Behind the scenes, the data brokers feed a billion dollars industry that exchanges in detailed personal information, often collected to the knowledge or consent of a person. They fill out often full of precise stories of position, political trends and religious affiliation dossiers, therefore sell and resell those profiles, feeding everything, from hyper -super -vain advertisements to the surveillance of the police.

Even among the small part of the Americans who know this surveillance ecosystem exists, less still includes its real scale or ways in which it can model, influence or intrude into their life.

At the beginning of this year, the Trump administration silently abandoned a proposed rule that would have a collection and sale of brusciously limited brokers of Americans data by treating some brokers such as “consumer signaling agencies” pursuant to fair credit reporting act. At the same time, contractual documents Show that the US intelligence community is preparing a centralized market to simplify the purchases of data available on the market: shared access donation agencies to large repositories of sensitive information without the orders of the court otherwise required for traditional surveillance.

For survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking, the risks are acute. The national network to end domestic violence Warns the security network project That data brokers collect and sell large quantities of information that can put survivors at risk, adding that the renunciation is already a burdensome and fragmentary process, forcing people to contact companies one by one, navigate on forms difficult to find and send reintegration of the requests for cancellation regularly.

“Instead of requesting people to navigate the Byzantine labyrinths to protect their personal information, these companies have the responsibility of making the tools that allow Americans to exercise their right to privacy easy to find and use,” says Hassan to Wired.

Sean Vitka, executive director of Demand Progress, a critical non -profit defense group against the industry, compares the surveillance ecosystem underlying the markets of commercial data with the tails knotted with a king of rat, a inseparable tangle of entities supported by flows of uncontrolled data. “The damage caused by the data brokers occurs in countless ways”, he says, “but it is all enabled by the same predatory abuse of consumer data”.

“And consistent with what we are seeing here, the industry cannot be trusted to mitigate your damage.”

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