Hi John,

Data brokers make money by giving your information to whoever will pay for it—law enforcement, government, corporate entities or even other private individuals. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently launched an inquiry¹ into the practices of data brokers, or as we like to call them here at ❤️Fight, data pirates. This input from the public  will help inform their planned rulemaking. Be one of the first to use our tool and let them know how data brokers have impacted you.

TAKE ACTION

Even though data brokers know you better than your best friend does, we all are typically unaware of how much information data brokers have on us or even how they get and use this data. Data brokers are the unchecked middlemen of surveillance capitalism.² They are part of an unregulated but very lucrative profit-making machine that thrives by essentially tracking, collecting, and selling your personal information to the highest bidder. As it stands now, once they have collected our data, there aren’t substantial regulations regarding how that data can and cannot be used. Brokers have so much of our personal information that it’s even possible to link our sensitive data to the individual, even without a legal name.³ This poses significant privacy and security concerns.

To make things worse, this data is often sold to entities that use them to target and discriminate against marginalized communities—people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, persons with disabilities, economically disadvantaged, immigrants and other minority groups. This constant surveillance can also target people seeking abortions or gender affirming care, leading to the exposure of their personal information and conversations. Trust us, this isn’t far-fetched. A priest was outed and forced to resign because of the sale of his location data.⁴

We have the chance to stop them from continuing this abuse of our personal data. The CFPB needs to hear from people like you to make it clear that we need action NOW. We know the other side will be doing the same. That’s why we created a tool to make it easy for you (and anyone else you know) to submit a comment to the CFPB.

You can fill out the form and we'll submit your comment. It is very important to add your own thoughts, personal stories and insights to help make a difference. You can also use this tool to request your information from data brokers, find out what they have on you or ask them to erase it.

To fighting the data pirates together,

Ese at ❤️Fight

1. CFPB Launches Inquiry Into the Business Practices of Data Brokers https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-launches-inquiry-into-the-business-practices-of-data-brokers/

2. Data brokers are a threat to democracy - Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-data-brokers-are-a-threat-to-democracy/

3. Data Brokers are the Problem - the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/data-brokers-are-problem

4. Top U.S. Catholic Church official resigns after cellphone data used to track him on Grindr and to gay bars - Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/07/20/bishop-misconduct-resign-burrill/