An effort by the Commerce Committee is looking to understand how companies collect, share and sell intimate details about the shopping habits, health concerns, family circumstances and financial status of consumers at a time when Americans are increasingly sharing personal information online.   http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/senator-intensifies-probe-of-data-brokers/?ref=us
The letter cited an article by KrebsOnSecurity.com, an Internet security news site, which published a report Sunday on the alleged sale of sensitive data by Court Ventures to the Web site Superget.info, whose administrators were based in Vietnam.
The report said that Court Ventures had signed a data-sharing agreement with another information services firm, called U.S. Info Search, and that Court Ventures had resold the other company’s data to Superget.info.
Last week, the Department of Justice announced an indictment against one of the administrators of the Superget.info site, a Vietnamese national named Hieu Minh Ngo. Among other allegations, the indictment charges him with conspiracy to commit identity fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Experian bought Court Ventures, described on Experian.com as an aggregator that repackages and resells electronically available public records data “obtained from more than 1,400 state and county sources,” in 2012.
Experian to date has “refused to fully respond” to the Commerce Committee’s request for the identities of Experian’s sources of consumer data and the purchasers of that data.
“While some consumers may not object to having their information categorized and used for marketing, before they share personal information, it is important that they know it may be used for purposes beyond those for which they originally provided it.”