Clawing Back a Bit of Privacy
A recent editorial in The New York Times focuses on an entirely legal industry that peddles personal information for a price. For some time, we have been advising our clients about the proliferation of personal information on the Internet, which poses a safety concern, especially to affluent families. Information such as home addresses and cell phone numbers, which are sold wholesale by credit reporting agencies to hundreds of data brokers, are readily available on the Internet for small sums. In the hands of criminals, this information is enormously dangerous in cases of targeted violence, stalking and abuse.
The Times suggests legislation to stem the easy traffic of personal information. In the interim, Insite’s Personal Information Removal (PIR) program is an effective tactic to mitigate this threat. It takes a sustained effort of making removal requests from each data broker and then constant monitoring to ensure personal information is not re-posted for sale, which is all part of our annual program.
Read the case study about a family member of a high-profile telecom executive whose private information was used to target him online.