"The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has proposed a new rule that would block data brokers from selling personal and financial information on Americans, including their Social Security numbers and phone numbers, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
In proposing the new rules, months after President Biden signed an executive order to curb the sale of Americans’ private data, the U.S. consumer protection agency said it aims to “rein in” data brokers who sidestep federal law by claiming that they are not subject to the FCRA’s legal provisions.
The CFPB’s director, Rohit Chopra, told reporters on a call Monday that the proposed rule would “curtail the widespread evasion” of the FCRA, which is the federal privacy law that protects personal data collected by consumer reporting agencies, like credit bureaus and tenant screening companies. The rule would also “make it clear that many of these data brokers, like credit bureaus and background check companies, are subject to federal protection under the FCRA.”"
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"The United States government’s leading consumer protection watchdog announced Tuesday the first steps in a plan to crack down on predatory data broker practices that the agency says help fuel scams, violence, and threats to US national security.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is proposing a rule that would allow regulators to police data brokers under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a landmark privacy law enacted more than a half century ago. Under the proposal, data brokers would be limited in their ability to sell certain sensitive personal information, including financial data and credit scores, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, and addresses. The CFPB says that closing the loopholes allowing data brokers to trade in this data with little to no oversight will benefit vulnerable people and the US as a whole."
https://www.wired.com/story/cfpb-fcra-data-broker-oversight/