The Naughty List
Over the last five years, I have grown increasingly concerned about the rise of ‘surveillance capitalism,’ the lack of data privacy legislation, and the complete indifference of the American public on this deteriorating situation.
When I talk with friends and family about these concerns, I find I’m not alone. I also find there isn't much awareness of the specific companies and institutions who are so actively engaged in harvesting personal information and selling it indiscriminately.
Facebook has made a recent splash in the news for their use of dark patterns and lack of respect for personal information. But the problem is much larger than Facebook. I don’t have any legal experience, nor do I have any social ‘influence.’ (I’m too introverted!)
But for my part, I’d like to at least help spread awareness of the companies, institutions, and individuals who are leading our nation down this dark path.
Said differently, here is my naughty list:
Data Brokers Who Sell Your Data Without Your Knowledge or Consent
(Info on how to contact these companies and ‘opt-out’ of their invasive practices can be found at https://github.com/yaelwrites/Big-Ass-Data-Broker-Opt-Out-List. Thank you to Yael Grauer, Paul Schreiber, and Douglas Dollars for assembling and maintaining this thoughtful list.)
- Acxiom
- Advanced Background Checks
- Archives
- BackgroundAlert
- BeenVerified
- CheckPeople
- CheckThem.com
- Classmates.com
- ClustrMaps
- CyberBackgroundChecks
- FamilyTreeNow
- FastPeopleSearch
- FreePeopleDirectory
- Homemetry
- IDTrue
- InfoTracer
- InstantCheckmate
- Intelius
- MyLife
- Nuwber
- PeekYou
- PeopleByName
- PeopleFinders
- PeopleSearchNow
- Persopo
- Pipl
- Private Eye
- PublicRecordsNow
- Radaris
- SearchBug
- SearchPeopleFree
- SearchQuarry
- SmartBackground Checks
- Spoke
- Spokeo
- TruePeopleSearch
- That’s Them
- TruthFinder
- USA People Search
- US Search
- USPhoneBook
- Verecor
- VoterRecords
- White Pages
- Xlek
- ZoomInfo
Location Brokers Who Sell Your (Real-Time) Location Without Your Knowledge or Consent
(Thank you to Jon Keegan for assembling this list and making it available at https://github.com/the-markup/location-data-industry.)
- 1010Data
- Acxiom
- AdSquare
- ADVAN
- Airsage
- Amass Insights
- Alqami
- Amazon AWS Data Exchange
- Anomaly 6
- Babel Street
- Blis
- Complementics
- Cuebiq
- Datarade
- Foursquare
- Gimbal
- Gravy Analytics
- GroundTruth
- Huq Industries
- InMarket / NinthDecimal
- Irys
- Kochava Collective
- Lifesight
- Mobilewalla
- Narrative
- Near
- Onemata
- Oracle
- Phunware
- PlaceIQ
- Placer.ai
- Predicio
- Predik Data-Driven
- Quadrant
- QueXopa
- Reveal Mobile
- SafeGraph
- Snowflake
- start.io
- Stirista
- Tamoco
- THASOS
- Unacast
- Venntel
- Venpath
- Veraset
- X-Mode (Outlogic)