"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.”"
#USA #CFPB #FCRA #DataProtection #Privacy #DataBrokers #DataBrokerage
"On Tuesday the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published a long anticipated proposed rule change around how data brokers handle peoples’ sensitive information, including their name and address, which would introduce increased limits on when brokers can distribute such data. Researchers have shown how foreign adversaries are able to easily purchase such information, and 404 Media previously revealed that this particular data supply chain is linked to multiple acts of violence inside the cybercriminal underground that has spilled over to victims in the general public too.
The proposed rule in part aims to tackle the distribution of credit header data. This is the personal information at the top of a credit report which doesn’t discuss the person’s actual lines of credit. But currently credit header data is distributed so widely, to so many different companies, that it ends up in the hands of people who use it maliciously."
https://www.404media.co/u-s-government-tries-to-stop-data-brokers-that-help-dox-people-through-credit-data/