Data Broker

Rinat: 00:00

Where are you right now? What are you doing? What are you gonna do tomorrow or in the next half an hour? Does anyone else know? It's only you or maybe your loved ones. But there are a big system of people who knows also. The things that even you probably don't know about yourself.

Rinat: 00:33

Today we're gonna talk about data brokerage. Which is all about your personal data and how it's being wholesaled out to big companies so they can make more accurate prediction about you that you don't even know yourself. Welcome to Tech Talk, a podcast where Amit and I talk about all things tech.

Rinat: 00:59

And today we're gonna talk about data, specifically data brokerage, how your data is being sold and bought and categorized and processed in a wholesale scale. So let's talk about data brokerage.

Rinat: 01:21

Thanks Amit for coming up with this topic. I have a lot of questions and looking forward to learn a lot and also have a inspiring conversation.

Amit: 01:31

Thanks again Rinat for that amazing introduction. I think that was a very apt introduction for this topic, data broker. And when I was doing research for this topic, it just blew my mind. there are so many things that we are not even aware of that is happening behind the scene. Let's start with what a data broker is. A data broker is someone who tries to collect information, process it, and sell it to someone else without having any direct interaction with you. Suppose you go to a website, say Facebook, and you interact with few profiles and you log out. Same thing you do say on Instagram, you do some activity on Instagram, and then you log out. These social media companies, they are bound to not sell your private data.

Amit: 02:13

But what they can sell is some of the activities that you're doing without actually telling who you are or where you're from. They can classify you in maybe a specific age category and they can still tell for this age category, for this gender, this person is doing so and so.

Amit: 02:32

The other example could be you go online, you apply for a loan or you apply for a credit card. Once you apply for a credit card, you start. Doing some credit transactions. So whenever you do a transaction, some of it is known by the companies.

Amit: 02:47

So what they tell is, okay so and so person bought so and so things, but they don't reveal the name and the identity, the exact age. So they have a profile of you in that sense. The other example is, there are credit agencies, so they look for your credit rating. How do they get that information? So credit card companies, mortgage providers, bank accounts, they are sharing all this information. Someone is actually buying that information and selling it to these companies, right? Banks might be selling it to these companies directly. Mortgage companies might be selling this information directly, but there are some other companies behind the scene who's doing all this work and selling it to these companies. Suppose the police wants to check your criminal activity record. Where do they find that information? Suppose they want to check if you have a fraud account or if, have you ever committed any crime? Because I think there are DBS checks. So recently, I think when you applied for a job, there was a DBS check. how does that check happen? Who provides that information?

Amit: 03:43

And then your health records. So there are so many records that are available for each of the individuals, and how do you process that information and imagine this information does not have to be specific to an individual. They just have to be specific to an age category, specific to a gender, and then you can start selling or targeting people about certain kinds of information.

Rinat: 04:08

This is so fascinating. If you think about data and all the places data goes and how it travels based on, big businesses with a lot of money. As you started with the example Facebook, and as soon as Facebook comes in the picture with data, they are notorious for using your data to make sure that they make a lot of money.

Rinat: 04:32

You might think you log into Facebook or Instagram and you look at a few profiles, they already know which IP address, which approximate location, all of that you're logging in from, but did you know, they also know how many other tabs that you have open in your browser and what those tabs are.

Rinat: 04:54

So maybe you are browsing Facebook, but at the same time, you have another tab open, which is Amazon or whichever else LinkedIn or whatever. Facebook will know that these are the other frequently visited websites that you go to, or maybe it's a deeply personal website that you visit.

Rinat: 05:15

Facebook will know about these preferences of yours, and then they will match these information with your profile, which you may or may not want to. For example, the example you gave Amit a little bit earlier that whether or not to make a financial decision.

Rinat: 05:32

So Facebook, whether you like it or not, knows whether you are a POC, person of colour or not. Now, based on that, if a financial decision was to be made, whether to give you a loan or not, that would be illegal, but they have that power to make that decision based on their data analytics. If it showed that particular demographic or particular age category or particular gender is more susceptible to pay off their loan or not, they could make that decision. even if they don't make that particular decision because it is very explicitly illegal, they might make other decision whether to show you a particular credit card ad or not. It might not be directly illegal, but it is a decision being made for you without your express consent.

Rinat: 06:29

And how are these things happening and who are these people who are collecting your data? You don't even have to go to Facebook. Facebook has shadow profiles that they created for people who don't even have Facebook account created. From data that they have bought from other companies, and those are the data broker, the people or the entities that collects and sells your data to a marketplace.

Rinat: 06:59

Those are the people or the entities that we wanna talk about today and know about so we can be more vigilant about these things and these decisions.

Amit: 07:08

And I think if you talk about the different types of data as we mentioned, it could be demographic data. it could be your income level, it could be your criminal record, your credit records, et cetera. These are different types of data.

Amit: 07:20

And so firstly, let's start with the different types of data brokers. We have different types of data brokers that sell different types of information to different types of entities. These entities could be government bodies credit agencies, banks, et cetera. So if you start with marketing data brokers and marketing data brokers collect information for advertising and customer segmentation.

Amit: 07:42

So they look at what is your buying habit, what are your interests, what is your income level? What is your lifestyle? Where do you normally spend? And this is then used to target you more products. It could be in the form of sending newsletters, sending emails, showing you specific products when you go to a certain website, et cetera. So have you ever thought what products you are recommended when you go to a website and why those kind of products are recommended to you even though you have not logged in. There might be information that can be traced back to your IP address, like what IP address is being used to browse, what kind of information.

Amit: 07:45

But this is specifically to target from a marketing perspective. I want to sell something to you. And I want to create a profile of you. I want to know how much money you have and where do you normally spend,

Amit: 08:30

It's easy for me to target you specifically with some products. Say for example, I am a tech enthusiast. I work in IT company and I earn a certain level of money. So now companies can say, okay, he's a tech enthusiast, so Target him with television advertisements, computer advertisements or tech products, AI products, et cetera, because we know he can afford it, plus we know that he's interested in it. So that's the first type of data broker. And then there are companies who are buying it. they are the customers for such type of information.

Rinat: 09:04

Yeah, absolutely. And I just thought about this other thing, and this is related to the power to the masses thinking strategy where our data is being sold and bought in marketplaces and we don't really have any control over, but as much as we feel helpless. But did you know that you could also be an entity in those marketplaces?

Rinat: 09:27

one of the things that I recently came to know about is you could even see and buy live GPS data from satellite on particular days. if the, that day was cloudy, you wouldn't have those data.

Rinat: 09:43

But that's a risk. , , there, there is always that risk when you are buying data. But say for example, if you wanted to know on a particular day. Whether someone was parked in front of your house or not you could actually go back and buy that data from satellites the satellite imagery of a particular road, it doesn't even have to be your driveway. It could be any road that you are able to buy. And then also. if you are doing an analysis in a particularly affluent area, what kind of cars do pass by in that area, and then you could extrapolate information from those data to target particular people as well. Specifically for marketing, this is a big industry, particularly to feed marketing decision and analysis and all of these different kinds of data. We may not think that these are useful for marketing people, but they will find some sort of correlation of causation, of how you can utilize these analysis to make buying decisions.

Rinat: 10:52

I remember this came out a couple of years ago there was a teenage girl who was looking at Walmart websites and they keep suggesting products that you may also like these things.

Rinat: 11:04

And Walmart was showing pregnancy products to this teenage girl and she was like, why am I seeing all of these? And then she didn't know it herself, but two weeks later she found out that she was pregnant. So Walmart collected enough data to do enough analysis to know before the mother to be.

Rinat: 11:27

That she might become pregnant based off of her, patterns of activities that they've collected. So this is while quite intrusive, but also very interesting on how; they knew it before doctors. They knew it before a whole industry of products that check for pregnancy, but the, their AI algorithm was able to figure it out.

Rinat: 11:50

And this was in the news and everything as well that how intrusive these data collections can be. If you could use that for good, I think there is a lot of benefit for people. But then at the moment, it definitely is being used for less good than more to make you buy more stuff.

Amit: 12:12

I think you absolutely hit the nail. You talked about the first thing you said about the GPS data and other things. So actually there is a data broker type, which is called the location data brokers. And they look at GPS data, they look at your check-in data, they look at geotag photos.

Amit: 12:27

So say you post an Instagram photo and say your profile is public for some reason. And you say that you have currently taken this photo at this location. Public information, they know who you are because your profile is public. They know where you have gone to because you have mentioned the place name. The photograph indicates what you're doing. So basically, they've collected all this information. The second thing is the moment you check in to a hotel or you check in online, you say that, okay, I have checked into this place and you broadcast it. People know where you are. Then your GPS data, which you mentioned, like people know about your GPS data, they track you. this location data is again, quite useful. and this can be used to sell products based on where you're going or what activities you're doing. So it could be like, okay, you go for bungee jump. Because you have gone to these places. So now I'll target you with more adventure stuff. If you go to a restaurant, I'll target you with specific restaurant data. If you go to a specific cuisine, I can maybe target with that information. The other thing is urban planners and development people. So they will see, okay, where are people normally going to? can we host an event there? Can we build more properties there, et cetera.

Amit: 13:37

So this is useful information. Then governments for planning purposes okay, where are people normally going to, are there a lot of tourists going? Are there a lot of local people going? How can we use that information to plan our city much better, the traffic much better, et cetera.

Amit: 13:52

So this is an information that's done by the location data broker. And you mentioned about the pregnancy stuff. That is very interesting because I think a lot of people don't realize, but our phones are listening to us. So if I'm talking to you right now, and if I talk to you about data broker or I talk to you, say about a movie Gladiator 2.

Amit: 14:13

If you go to Instagram after a few posts, you will start seeing Gladiator 2 information on your feed, right? Because they know. And you don't realize it. And I've tested it multiple times with multiple people. We talk about something and suddenly it is there in our feed.

Amit: 14:33

So bear in mind, sometimes you do a Google search and then you see the information, but now in this case, I'm just randomly talking to you about something and suddenly I'm getting that in my feed. How's that possible?

Rinat: 14:45

Yes, absolutely. And this is I actually know a bit of a, like a insider information on one of many technologies that they use to, to get these things. So when we say phones are listening, of course they might be listening to the actual conversation and then transcribing it. I don't know if it is on that level, but I do know one thing that does happen, which is when you are watching tv. TV is obviously emitting sound, which, it relates to the show you're looking at, but it also send signals like beep and the particular signals when they're doing a particular kind of advertisement. And the phone is listening to those signals. Though, we don't hear this, but these communication is happening between your phone and your tv.

Rinat: 15:32

So your phone knows which things you are watching. It could be live tv. It could even be a Netflix movie, but your phone will find out what are the things you are watching based on those noises that are being emitted from your tv. this is all a huge network of data transfer without your knowledge.

Rinat: 15:53

Obviously. whenever you visit a new website, you get the cookie consent and you're probably aware that's what's happening. But there are so many other things that are happening behind your back without you realizing that all of these communication, like a big, massive network is happening around you and you have no control over it.

Rinat: 16:17

while we are on the cookie subject, I just want to quickly also mention that, in the UK and eu whenever you go to a new website, you have the option to accept or reject the cookie message the reject button has to be a one click button.

Rinat: 16:33

A lot of our listeners would probably experience that as I have, and I'm sure, Amit, you have too, You can accept with one click, but if you wanna reject it, you might have to click two or even three clicks to choose on that. And if you do come across a UK based or EU based website, which are doing that, do report it to the proper authorities because it should be accept or reject. It shouldn't be more difficult to reject than accept.

Amit: 16:59

Oh, okay. That is very good to know because yes I've faced this a lot of times I, by default, my option is reject everything, but sometimes I don't see this information because then they say, okay, manage your consent, and then you have to go and then select the specific options,

Amit: 17:14

So there are multiple clicks involved, but that's good to know because I have encountered so many websites that I will, I. I'll definitely report it. So I think that's a good information. Let's move on to the next type of data broker -is a health data broker. Health data broker is trying to get information about your activities, your health, et cetera.

Amit: 17:31

But what kind of activities? So a lot of people now use a fitness tracker. They have a Garmin watch or they have something, they have an Apple watch and they're tracking their fitness they're posting it on Strava, et cetera. Profiles are public. So with this information you can now collect health information and there are so many fitness devices.

Amit: 17:49

You have a smart scale in your house where you can weight yourself. You have a smart thermometer, you have a smart blood pressure monitor, you have a smart glucose monitor, you have a smart heart rate monitor. who would benefit from such kind of information?

Amit: 18:03

So there are insurance companies, they are our healthcare providers. There are pharmaceutical companies that will look at your fitness data, but not just fitness data, your prescription records. Because bear in mind, once a prescription is given to you in a hospital or a gp, you take it to a public pharmacy.

Amit: 18:21

and those pharmacies may be selling that information because it's now in a public place. You're going to a shop, you're handing over the pharmacy and they might be selling this information and based on your prescription, you can figure out what kind of medical conditions you have.

Amit: 18:37

So now you can form a picture about a person and you can say, how much insurance should I offer this person? what kind of healthcare plan should I offer this person? What kind of drug should I target this person through advertisement, et cetera. So this is another way to sell information about your personal health, which many people may not be aware of.

Rinat: 18:59

Yeah, absolutely. So it all boils down to this marketplace or this industry of. Data brokers what do we mean when we say data brokers? they collect and then package it up and then sell it to the highest bidder or whoever would buy.

Rinat: 19:20

with the advent of ai, now AI needs a lot of data to teach itself in terms of particular patterns of human behavior or whatever. And with the boom of ai, the need of categorized, profil- able data has increased exponentially. How to cleanse, collect, and refine data and package it up and then sell it, before even the boom of ai, it already was really lucrative, but now it's even another degree of more lucrative. I remember a couple of years ago for a particular project, I was looking for a particular set of data and I was looking on the internet, where can I find this data. And it was a personal project and when I came across some data, which the website said to be very good quality data, and it was so expensive that I had to just give up on that project because it just wasn't feasible for me to go ahead with that anymore. So that's how expensive your data is and it's a shame that none of us gets any cut.

Amit: 20:28

You touched upon a very important topic like, okay, what are the data brokers actually doing? So initially I was just focused on the types. Maybe we'll get back to it, but you're right, data is collected, but what kind of information do they collect? How do they aggregate? How do they fill the gaps and how do they monetize it? there are public records, birth certificates, death certificates, your land registry records, your address history, your house property sales record.

Amit: 20:53

If you go to Rightmove, for people who are not in the uk, there is a company called Right Move. You can actually go onto Right Move, you can look at the sale house prices, and if you put in a postcode, you can look at, what was that particular house sold for previously? So suppose I live at a particular address.

Amit: 21:10

suppose my house was sold in: 2019

Amit: 21:31

That is public information, And then your birth certificate, public information, your MOT records if someone knows what is your vehicle registration number. They can go to your MOT records and they can see whether you have any fines or whether you have failed your MOT, et cetera, then you have private records. Private records could be your credit card transactions. So suppose you are buying a lot of stuff. Have you ever actually looked at your bank statement? Your bank statement gives a very good picture about what you are as a person.

Amit: 22:01

I get my salary, that's a line in the bank statement. I pay credit card bills. I pay my electricity bills. I pay my broadband. I pay my mobile. I pay my water. I pay energy. I can see all those bills. Then I transfer some money to different accounts. Then some people send me some money. I get money from different sources. Maybe I get rental income. I can see all that in a Bank transaction. Suppose, they take out all the name, they just have the transaction and the address. They know what this person is doing. Even though there's not a lot of personal information, they still can frame a good picture about it.

Amit: 22:34

So that's private transaction

Rinat: 22:36

And they can then profile you based on your other data, like demographics and age and race and all of that, which overall, and banks will have, data of another 10 million people. And then they can analyze that data to come to some conclusion, which might not even be politically or ethically correct

Amit: 22:59

I will give you an example. So I recently went to South Africa to travel with my family. And when I was doing some credit card transactions online, my credit card was blocked because they knew that I'm doing a transaction, which I normally don't do. Okay, so they blocked the transaction. So I had to confirm saying that, okay, this is me who's doing the transaction.

Amit: 23:20

Now, the reason they are doing this is supposed to prevent fraud. So suppose I live in the UK and suddenly I have a transaction in South Africa. If it is stolen, then they block it. So it's, in a way, it's good, but they are tracking all these kind of information as well.

Amit: 23:33

It can also prevent money laundering. There are a lot of cases where they analyze your transaction and they have a picture of you. And suddenly if you do some transaction, which are not a regular transaction, they flag it as, okay, this is something which is not regular.

Amit: 23:50

It is something out of the blue. It is a high value transaction. Let's escalate it. Let's block it. It could be someone trying to money launder. sometimes in films people don't transfer a lot of money together. They bundle it into small pieces and send it so that it doesn't look very suspicious.

Rinat: 24:08

Yes, absolutely. So there are obviously good implications of data usage and unethical ones as well. These are some of the example of data being used in a good way to protect citizens and to protect us from fraudulent activities, et cetera.

Rinat: 24:24

But then again, just the point that comes back again is that, as the giver of the data, you don't have a lot of control over the data being collected and you don't benefit from it at all. So that's the part that really I wanna highlight a little bit.

Rinat: 24:40

That these data brokers, they are collecting your data, they're cleansing it and then packaging it up and then selling it in a marketplace. Going back to the theme of power to the masses nowadays, regular people are also becoming more aware of the power of data and power of analysis.

Rinat: 24:58

They also wanna analyze their bank transactions and know what it tells about each of us. So nowadays in UK at least if you go to your bank, and I know Lloyds do this because I bank with them you could download your CSV transaction, not just a PDF file, but you could, analyze your own data so you can get insights out of it, about your spending habits and et cetera.

Rinat: 25:24

And nowadays, more and more companies are giving you this data about yourself. So my energy provider is octopus, and they also give you quite a bit of data in terms of your energy usage.

Rinat: 25:39

So this is quite helpful in a way that you could gather insights from your energy usage. How and what time of the day do you use the most energy? What are the sort of causation factors that makes you use more energy, if you combine all of these data sources together, you could combine all of this data and dump it on an AI platform like Chat GPT, and they will analyze it for you and come up with insights that you've never even thought of. Maybe they will combine it with the weather data The news on that day, something different that you did. And they will come back to you with some sort of recommendation on how to, improve certain decisions. So it's really powerful and it's really insightful for you to use your own data, and I very much recommend it. Don't just let data brokers get the best out of you, but you get the best out of you.

Amit: 26:38

I think I, I'm already doing that with my energy data because I want to see a pattern is as to which months of the year I'm spending more energy and spending more money. And if my plan changes, how does it affect my monthly billing? Because my energy usage throughout a year should follow certain pattern.

Amit: 26:56

But because the plans keep changing The amount I'm paying every month should go up and down based on my usage. So yeah I do that analysis, but let's come back to the different types of data collection methods.

Amit: 27:08

The other type of data collection that I wanted to talk about was your digital footprint, your browsing history. Chrome browser and many other websites track what are the tabs that you have opened? I have noticed this suppose I try to put something in my cart and I put my email address, but I don't check out.

Amit: 27:27

I get a email reminder saying, oh, you forgot something in your cart. Do you want to purchase it? And I recently tried that with some other type of transaction. I was like, wow, this is interesting. Someone is actually reminding me to go buy something, which I actually stopped buying. So that's one kind of information and then the social media activity.

Amit: 27:48

So these are your digital footprints. Then you have the third party. Data sharing. So suppose I go to a website. The website itself is collecting information, but whatever information it is collecting, it is now selling it to the data broker. So this is how the data is collected. Then it has to be aggregated, like it has to be organized.

Amit: 28:07

You're getting information from multiple sources. How do you organize it? So you have to organize it based on, say, demographics like. Where is it coming from? What is the age what is the gender for that person? What is the income? What is the education level? So you aggregate based on that. Then you look at the behaviors, like what is the purchase history, like your hobbies et cetera.

Amit: 28:26

And then which, what is the geographic. Area that it's coming from. Is it coming from London? Is it coming from Scotland, Wales, Cardiff, et cetera? So that's the kind of aggregation that they'll do. They'll try to organize all this information. the next bit is enrichment, so they will have some information, but they'll not have all information.

Amit: 28:45

based on certain AI modeling, ML modeling, et cetera, they can fill the gaps and they can create a profile for you. And the last thing is they sell this data, so they monetize this information. So a data broker is basically doing a lot of things, which maybe not in your benefit, Let's talk about some of the other data broker types, which we didn't talk about.

Amit: 29:07

There is one data broker that is for risk mitigation. The risk mitigation is basically people who have criminal records, people who have credit history or financial instabilities et cetera. And financial institutions like banks, they are looking for people like this who are at risk because they don't want to provide money to them because they think that if we provide money to them, then our money will be at risk. And if we do provide them money, then maybe we should charge a higher interest because we know our money is at a higher risk compared to if we provide someone with no criminal records or a good credit score because bear in mind, if you have a good credit score, you'll get better interest rates. If you have a bad credit score, you'll get bad interest rates Or if there is a CCJ, and if it is there in your credit records, it'll basically impact you directly because then if you try to apply for a credit card or apply for anything, maybe you'll get a lower limit or maybe you will get a very high interest rate.

Amit: 30:06

So these data brokers help these credit agencies to mitigate their risk by providing information about people who have certain types of records, which they think is of higher risk.

Rinat: 30:17

Yeah, the whole industry of, collecting, selling and processing data is so vast and it's so ingrained in all of these other industries. This is like in many ways it's related to everything else. tech, marketing, selling, everything is having a backbone of data.

Rinat: 30:40

And it's very important that all of us, know about what's happening. And also I wanna let you guys know that there is power to yourselves as well. It's scary and powerful to think that you can go out today on the internet and buy some data and buy some really well categorized and targeted data yourself.

Rinat: 31:05

it is quite expensive and you'll have to fork out the money, but, you might feel powerful knowing that yes, I can do exactly what Facebook or other big techs are doing. while that is partially true, you can't do anything at their scale, but that also means that anyone can go to this marketplace.

Rinat: 31:25

Of all of these data brokers who are waiting to sell you targeted data, anyone can go there and buy data targeting a particular group of people. you might think that you have a Reddit account, which is anonymous, and you interact with various articles and everything, but just looking at your comment history, there is a kind of understanding that can be made and now if someone bought a particular set of data which targets those kind of things that you mentioned in your Reddit profile, then you could potentially be identified saying things that you don't want people to know that you said.

Amit: 32:06

That is very interesting, Rinat because if you think lot of companies, they look at your social media profiles to see what kind of political views you have, and if you have a very radical political view, they might not want to employ you. So even though you're a good candidate, but just because you posted something which doesn't align with the company's political views or ideologies, you may not be hired.

Amit: 32:29

So suppose you apply for a job. If I want to look for Rinat Malik, I would immediately first Google your name. Then I will see, okay, what are the links I'm getting? I will say, okay, I get an image so I can see that, okay, I spoke to Rinat, he looks like this, so I get this image. Then I can see, okay, does he have a LinkedIn profile? Does he have a Facebook profile? Does he have an Instagram profile? What kind of pictures is he posting on Instagram? Is it public? Is it private? What kind of information he's posting on Facebook. if you have a Facebook login, you can actually go and see what kind of post you are sharing. So it creates a image about your political ideologies and your other types of ideologies, right? So I have now formed a picture of you, and then I can decide whether I need to hire you or not.

Rinat: 33:12

Exactly. And that might actually be unethical to judge a candidate based on that.

Amit: 33:17

There's one more thing. Lot of people get arrested for their political views for posting on social media. Countries like uk, we don't have this problem. But if you are in a country where the government is constantly monitoring the social media profiles, then you could be targeted for creating dissent, for instigating anti nationalist views, et cetera.

Amit: 33:40

So you could be arrested just by posting a comment. You have not done anything, but just because you posted something on social media, you could be arrested just for saying something.

Rinat: 33:50

And or more dangerous than that, and this just sends shivers down my spine, is that you could even not say anything, but someone else that don't like you could make it look like that you've said something online because they could create a fake profile with your picture and everything, and they could comment, comment something with anti nationalist views or whatever, and they could put you in trouble.

Rinat: 34:15

And now I wanna go back to something you said earlier about the jobs and candidates, et cetera. And what I wanted to add on that is nowadays, they don't even have to go to particular platforms separately. There are softwares which exists and they can just literally just type your email address or your name. And then this software will search all of the internet and all of the social media platforms and then create a packaged up data profile of yourself, which contains everything. And it may also contain something that you've said decades ago when you were in your teens or early twenties, It could be a Twitter post that you've made decades ago and your world view now has broadened, And you are more than capable of doing a particular job.

Rinat: 35:05

And maybe your political views does align with this job that you're applying. But 10 years ago there was a controversial Twitter post and that might actually make you not get that job

Amit: 35:17

But I think what you just described is the last type of data broker I wanted to cover, and that is the people search broker. So employers, law enforcement agencies, if they have to search for a person, they go to such websites where they just type in the name or the email address and they get all the information.

Amit: 35:35

So if I want to create a, if I want to basically hire you, or I want to check your criminal record, I can go to this website, I can quickly get your whole profile and I might get a score and say, okay, higher, not higher, high risk, no low risk, et cetera. So that's the last type of data broker, a people search broker.

Rinat: 35:53

Yeah. So That's the whole purpose of our podcast episode Amit and I, can give you guys this knowledge and awareness so you can be more aware of what could happen to you and also be more powerful in terms of knowing what you could do with what is available in the marketplace.

Rinat: 36:12

Maybe you have a good idea to use particular set of data for the greater good or for good of a particular group of people. So if you have that kind of idea, now you know that these kind of data are available if it is a good project, which will help benefit a lot of people, then you could get funding for these kind of things as well.

Rinat: 36:33

We wanna make you aware of what's happening to you and also what are the things that you could do to make a difference, to make a change, by using your own data or getting data from these data brokers and use it for the benefit of people.

Amit: 36:48

Yeah, I think it is important to be aware because if you are aware, you can actually prevent things from happening. And in case something happens, you are aware of what actually triggered it or what mistake you did so that you can avoid doing that in the future There are a lot of cases where identity theft occurs, and when identity theft occurs, people can do a transaction on your behalf and you are liable for the transaction. There are cases where people buy a house on your behalf and you are liable for paying everything.

Amit: 37:21

So I have currently put a monitor for my house where I can see if someone is trying to sell my house. sometimes this happens. People advertise your house, they'll get the pictures from Right Move website and they'll start selling it to someone.

Amit: 37:38

Someone with a lot of cash. They will dupe the person and that person might come to your house and you'll say, oh, but I didn't sell it. But then you will see that someone actually tried to impersonate you because they have the land registry records. They can then try to do a sales transaction, and that triggers something.

Amit: 37:55

So I've put a monitor so that in case someone tries to sell my house and they try to impersonate me. Because your land registered record will also have your name. So if they try to impersonate you and try to sell your house, you'll get an immediate notification. That's an identity theft and you should be aware of all these things so you can avoid such things.

Rinat: 38:16

Wow. I hadn't even thought of that . But this is a really big ticket item. imagine a hacker who has all of these knowledge and data on their side if they does their due diligence for six months because it's that much reward for them. Then they could do things that you haven't even thought of. So it's always so important to keep track of where your data is going, always reject the cookies and report the websites that don't let you reject easily. All of these things are actually important and directly affecting your current daily life.

Rinat: 38:53

I personally Google, Facebook , I kind of gave up on them because there is no winning with that. But the, these smaller websites which you occasionally visit definitely worth that extra two clicks to reject them because they're selling your data, God knows where.

Rinat: 39:12

Definitely. Be aware, be more careful and be vigilant. Like an example that Amit just gave, maybe you guys wanna do that too. Make sure that you get immediate notification if there is any move on your house.

Rinat: 39:26

It was quite eye-opening, all of these things you said. And I also thought about all of these things that I knew about, but then, being able to share with all of you guys it definitely makes it feel more meaningful.

Amit: 39:39

Definitely, and in the end, I would just say resist the temptation because there are a lot of temptations around you to buy a lot of things because they are targeted to you.

Amit: 39:49

Sometimes people blame themselves, oh I have this bad habit. I can't control myself. I see something and I buy it. But bear in mind, someone is actually constantly targeting you and advertising you so that you are forced to buy. So it's sometimes not your fault, so you should also not be blamed for certain habits that you have. So always resist the temptation.

Rinat: 40:13

Absolutely couldn't agree more. Thank you, Amit, for that insight. And with that I hope our audience had a really good understanding and a message to take away and update in however way possible. hope you guys enjoyed this talk and we look forward to seeing you in the next one.

Amit: 40:31

Thank you guys.