Data brokers are collecting and selling service member data — including health, family, geographic and military service information — for pennies and dimes, according to a recent study from Duke University.
Over a 12-month study and to better understand the problem, the university’s data brokerage research project bought data from sites that collect and sell personal information. Some of those sites curated their search criteria to military demographics like branch, duty and veteran status.
Researchers found that the unregulated, multibillion-dollar industry poses a significant risk to national security — and current U.S. policy isn’t doing enough to curtail it.
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“It is not difficult to obtain sensitive data about active-duty members of the military, their families, and veterans, including non-public, individually identified, and sensitive data, such as health data, financial data, and information about religious practices,” the study, which was published earlier this month, found.
The data broker ecosystem, which includes companies like Oracle and Experian, gathers information “on virtually every American,” according to the project, with the intent of aggregating it and selling it.
Part of that accessibility comes from the low price that the data brokers sell their information at. The research team bought data from U.S….
