Inside One of the World's Largest Data Brokers

itwbennett writes "Contrary to recent reports, data broker Acxiom is not planning to give consumers access to all the information they've collected on us. That would be too great a challenge for the giant company, says spokesperson Alexandra Levy. Privacy blogger Dan Tynan recently spoke with Jennifer Barrett Glasgow, Chief Privacy Officer at Acxiom (she claims to be the very first CPO) about how the company collects information and what they do with it. This should give you some small measure of comfort: 'We don't know that you bought a blue shirt from Lands End. We just know the kinds of products you are interested in. We're trying to get a reasonably complete picture of your household and what the individuals who live there like to do,' says Glasgow."

Comments

In Europe , that would be criminal

[gweihir]

If you cannot tell people exactly what data you have collected about them, you are not allowed to collect that data. Penalties up to 2 years imprisonment apply. (Well, it is Europe, so I doubt anybody has been sent to prison yet for breach of data privacy laws, but still....) And they would also have to delete any and all data on request from the people that data is about. Cannot do it? Sorry, your business Model is criminal.