Jessica Guynn of the LA Times:

The FTC wants to know what the brokers do with the information. It also wants to know if the data brokers let consumers review and correct their personal information or opt out from having their personal information sold.

I can guess that they sell it as “background check” data to both reputable and shady services of that kind, and almost certainly none of them allow correction or opt-out.

It’s one thing to consent to tracking efforts by Amazon, Google, and Facebook, whose labyrinthine Terms of Service are at least publicly-available. It’s another thing to be tracked without consent, without even agreeing to a TOS we didn’t really read, by companies who profit by selling that information to still other companies.

We need legislation on this, as in most other areas of consumer privacy, and especially on the internet, mandating opt-in only participation in data collection like this.