The Tech Companies Fighting To Sell Your Data

Companies accused of exposing consumers to fraud and trickery want Trump to let them freely buy and sell your personal information.

By Freddy Brewster, The Lever

As the Trump administration attempts to eviscerate the federal agency tasked with overseeing consumer protection, Big Tech trade associations and data brokers peddling consumer data are trying to kill a rule that would limit how they can sell sensitive personal information like your Social Security number and home address.

Some of those companies have been previously sued by regulators for issuing false credit reports and tricking consumers into monthly paid subscriptions. One of the largest of the companies was recently fined $150 million for knowingly selling more than 30 million consumers’ data to fraudsters who went on to target elderly victims.

If these groups get their way, the sensitive data for millions of Americans will continue to be up for sale, and experts say nefarious actors could potentially buy personal data that includes not just financial information but also data on dating app usage, exercise habits, health metrics, and users’ locations.

Buyers of this information have been known to use it for targeted ads, frauds, and scams. In one instance, a religious publication used “commercially available records of app signal data” to out a gay priest.

The proposed rule, first issued by the Biden administration in December 2024, would provide greater protection for consumers whose data is often spread across the internet by subjecting certain sensitive information — telephone numbers, personal financial ratings, income, and other personal details — to strict guidelines established in the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a 1970 law that placed limits on the selling of consumer data.

“In recent years, the consumer reporting marketplace has evolved in ways that imperil Americans’ privacy,” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wrote in the rule announcement. “Vast troves of sensitive data, including, for example, individualized data about a consumer’s finances, are bought and sold, without consumers’ knowledge or consent, by data brokers who believe that the [Fair Credit Reporting Act] does not apply to them or to some of their activities.”