If you missed Senator Rockefeller’s hearing on data brokers yesterday, Pam Dixon of the World Privacy Forum made a powerful point in her opening statement about how data brokers have no shame. She cited the fact that brokers were selling lists of rape victims’ names for 7.9 cents per name. It didn’t take look for the Internet and media to react.
The naming and shaming seems to have worked. Elizabeth Dwoskin reports:
A marketing company purporting to sell lists of rape and domestic violence victims removed the lists from its website Wednesday after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.
Medbase200, a Lake Forest, Ill., company that sells marketing information to pharmaceutical companies, had been offering a list of “rape sufferers” on its website, at a cost of $79 for 1,000 names.
The company also removed lists of domestic violence victims and “peer pressure sufferers” that it had been offering for sale, until it was contacted by the Journal.
Read more on the Wall Street Journal. I think their headline suggesting that their inquiry was responsible for the broker’s reaction is a bit off. All credit goes to Pam Dixon for this one. You can view an archived copy of the hearing here.