Privacy
Consumers and the Internet
Introduction
A trend of great concern is the partnership of major consumer directory services with companies that compile so called "public-records" databases. Such databases compile records from a wide variety of government agencies, including courts, vital statistics departments, tax rolls, elections records, or agencies that regulate professional licenses. In addition, some companies also purchase data that is mined from questionnaires, applications for credit cards, manufacturer's warranty information and other commercial sources.
Revenues are often the primary motivators for state agencies that license or sell access to their databases.
Web access to these data aggregators only broadens a growing problem inherent in these data services: consumers do not have access to the public information maintained about them and disseminated by the look-up services. Accordingly, consumers will not be able to check for inaccuracies resulting from transcription or other errors occurring in the process of obtaining or compiling the public information by the look-up services.
In addition to not being able to access the information maintained about them in these massive data warehouses, many of the large data mining companies do not offer individuals the ability to remove their personal data from the databases.
A wide array of personal information about each of us is kept electronically by others – by medical insurers, employers, credit card companies, banks, phone companies and a wide range of government and private agencies, some of which are in the business to sell our personal information, no matter how private. And new technologies keep arising to develop, collect, store and disseminate the most private information about each of us, with few, if any legal protections.
As a result, Americans suffered a record number of privacy violations, from marketing of prescrip...