Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has announced he is expanding his investigation of the data broker industry after several companies refused to disclose specific details about their business practices around the collection and processing of consumers’ personal information, Financial Times reports. Expanding beyond the nine original data broker businesses, Rockefeller said he will investigate 12 additional health, personal finance and family-focused websites. To this point, the Senate investigation has found that data brokers categorize and market consumer dossiers into groups, and in some cases, the categories included names such as “Rural and Barely Making It” and “Ethnic Second City Strugglers.” Rockefeller said, “Regardless of whether such characteristics are positive, negative or erroneous, the process of determining these characterizations is not transparent to the consumer and is beyond the consumer’s control.” (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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