The Situation Is Completely Out Of Control
You Are Being Left On Your Own To Try And Stop It!
Your consumer data is valuable to scammers and cybercriminals.
Everyone just assumes that scammers and cybercriminals are just a bunch of dumb guys sitting on a floor someplace in Africa. Nothing could be further from the terrible truth. They have vast amounts of money, and with money anything can be bought – including YOU!
As Heard At The FTCFTC The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) U.S. antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC can also act as a clearinghouse for criminal reports sent to other agencies for investigation and prosecution. To learn more visit www.FTC.gov or to report fraud visit ReportFraud.FTC.gov
Today (September 8th, 2022) in testimony before the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, several individuals talked about how cybercriminals are buying sophisticated data generated by Big Tech companies to support and enhance their advertising revenue. They do this by selling your data to data brokers – supposedly for legitimate marketing purposes – as horrible as that is, it gets worse, because there are data brokers selling this same data to cybercriminals too.
In fact, Google, Facebook/Meta, and the others also allow criminals to use their data directly on their platforms to place lure advertisements to pull in victims too!
The uncontrolled access to your behaviors, likes, interests, and so much more has increased the level of vulnerability to such a level that every adult and child is at risk of being uniquely targeted by scammers and criminals. Yet the big tech companies do not care, your data is money for them, and consumers have no real idea how bad the situation has become while they were not paying attention.
What Is To Be Done?
Better late than never. Even though your data can never be put back in the can, if we can stop the bleeding it will lose its value over time. But if we do not stop it now, it will only get worse since the amount of data that companies have about us is only growing,
For this reason, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is launching a new rule-making process to establish new regulations. SCARS is an active participant in that process.
What Is Happening Out There?
Scammers would love to discover where you shop online, what Facebook pages you like, and how much you spend on your home. That’s why data brokers are in business. They are the back-ally pimps that sell your data to anyone that asks.
Yes, they are selling you!
You don’t even know it is happening and you can’t stop it, only the government can.
What Are Data Brokers?
Data brokers are companies that collect information about you and then sell that data to others, usually companies or individuals. The information that data brokers collect can be extensive, everything from your birthdate and addresses to your job title, number of children, and even your outside interests.
In most cases, you might not even be aware that these data brokers are grabbing and collecting your personal information. They have more information about you than the CIA does! And yes they also sell it to Russia and China!
Data brokers either collect information on individuals or purchase it from other companies (such as Google and Facebook). There’s a reason these companies exist: The business of selling data is a lucrative one. According to WebFX, there were more than 4,000 data brokerage companies operating across the globe in 2019 alone. Since the pandemic, it is believed to have increased 3x,
WebFX gives an example of how active these companies can be: The data brokerage Acxiom, which ranks as one of the largest in the industry, collects data on 500 million consumers in the United States and Canada. It collects up to 1,500 different pieces of information per person. According to WebFX, data broker companies made $150 billion in revenue per year.
What Types Of Information Do Data Brokers Collect?
Think of anything a company would want to know about you to help sell your products or services. This is the kind of information data brokers collect on you.
SOME EXAMPLES?
Data brokers might know how many children you have and their ages. They might know when you got married or, if things went bad when you filed for divorce. Your income, gender, and home address are all pieces of information that data brokers collect.
BUT THAT’S JUST THE BEGINNING.
Say you spend a lot of time playing online video games. Data brokers might compile your favorite games or your favorite category of games, and then sell that information to companies hoping to sell you their own video adventures. If you collect baseball cards, a data brokerage firm will want to know. If you prefer one brand of dishwashing detergent over others, data brokers might know this, too, and will be happy to let companies know.
But it goes far beyond just this, and just imagine how much more effective scammers can be if they knew all of this in advance.
How Do Data Brokers Get Your Information?
You will be surprised at how much of your personal information is freely available to the companies that want it. Data broker companies don’t need to work hard to find your data. It is bought and sold in marketplaces that scammers have access to as well.
If scammers want to target recent widows, whose spouse or partner died in the last 6 months, that have home values above $100,000, and retirement and securities accounts, they can do it easily.
They can find elderly people looking for information about dementia or assisted living – because they will be easy targets, they can do it in just a few minutes.
Data brokers collect much of their information from public records. This includes court records, motor vehicle records, Census data, birth certificates, marriage licenses, voter registration information, bankruptcy records, and divorce records. And this is the worst part – your own local governments are working against you under the obsolete idea of transparency.
Brokers also either collect or purchase data from credit card providers and retailers. This includes such information as the amount of money you owe on your department store credit card, the type of coupons you tend to use, and the items you’ve purchased in the past after swiping a store’s loyalty card. Just imagine what scammers can do with that!
If you spend a lot of time on social media or in the online world, you’re giving data brokers even more information about you. Data brokers might nab personal information from the posts you’ve made or ‘liked’ online, online quizzes you’ve taken, online sweepstakes you’ve entered, and the websites you’ve visited. This allows the cybercriminals to create new socially engineered lures and traps to suck in victims in ever larger quantities!
How Is Your Information Used?
Selling your information hasn’t proved too difficult for data brokers. That’s because these companies have plenty of potential customers eager to purchase your information. The buyers include the Russians and Chinese eager to disrupt elections and exploit access to intellectual property. It also includes scammers (pretending to be legitimate businesses – but who really cares) to get your vulnerabilities that they can target and exploit.
Some of these buyers will use your information to create online ads that are targeted specifically at you. Others will use it to determine how likely it is that you’ll default on a personal loan so they can target you for a fake lottery. Still, others might use it to determine how likely it is that you will file an insurance claim or get into an auto accident, and try to sell you a fake extended warranty or push another scamScam A Scam is a confidence trick - a crime - is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust through deception. Scams or confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, irresponsibility, or greed and exploiting that. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators ('con men' - criminals) at the expense of their victims (the 'marks')". A scam is a crime even if no money was lost..
Marketing And Advertising
Have you ever been browsing the web only to see a banner ad for a product you already buy? Often, that ad for laundry pods pops up when your current supply is almost depleted. Data brokers might be behind this.
Guess, what? Scammers buy ads to pull you into their many different kinds of scamsScams A Scam is a confidence trick - a crime - is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust through deception. Scams or confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, irresponsibility, or greed and exploiting that. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators ('con men' - criminals) at the expense of their victims (the 'marks')". A scam is a crime even if no money was lost., and they do it to your children too!
Businesses purchase your shopping and spending information. Data brokers can often tell them what brand of laundry soap you’ve bought in the past and when you purchased it. This allows companies to send ads timed to when you might need pods. But scammers also collect data and they have learned what patterns and demographics yield the highest amounts of money for them too.
It’s not surprising, then, that scammers make up some of the active customers of data brokers.
FraudFraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain (money or other assets), or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compensation) or criminal law (e.g., a fraud perpetrator may be prosecuted and imprisoned by governmental authorities), or it may cause no loss of money, property, or legal right but still be an element of another civil or criminal wrong. The purpose of fraud may be monetary gain or other benefits, for example by obtaining a passport, travel document, or driver's license, or mortgage fraud, where the perpetrator may attempt to qualify for a mortgage by way of false statements. A fraud can also be a hoax, which is a distinct concept that involves deliberate deception without the intention of gain or of materially damaging or depriving a victim. Detection
Some businesses aren’t after your information purely for advertising or marketing purposes. Some use it for fraud detection. But scammers can also use it to target fraud.
Maybe you applied for an auto loan. Your lender might check the information you provided on your application against the numbers that data brokers dig up on you. This can help lenders determine that the information you provided regarding income, debts, and salary isn’t fraudulent.
But fraudsters can also use that information more effectively to impersonate you too!
People-Search Sites
People-search sites allow you to enter the name of any person and — usually for a fee — receive their phone numbers, addresses, age, birthdate, former addresses, and other information. Many data brokers gather this information from public records and sell it to these sites.
Many scam victims pay for these services to help them determine if someone is a fake. But have you considered that scammers now have the ability to upload their fake identities into these applicationsApplications Applications or Apps An application (software), commonly referred to as an ‘app’ is a program on a computer, tablet, mobile phone or device. Apps are designed for specific tasks, including checking the weather, accessing the internet, looking at photos, playing media, mobile banking, etc. Many apps can access the internet if needed and can be downloaded (used) either for a price or for free. Apps are a major point of vulnerability on all devices. Some are designed to be malicious, such as logging keystrokes or activity, and others can even transport malware. Always be careful about any app you are thinking about installing. as well? They have the money to reinforce their fake identities and make them look real.
Plus everything that is available to you is also available to them – ABOUT YOU!
Is Data Brokering Legal?
Data brokers aren’t acting illegally if they are using public records to get the information they sell. It isn’t illegal for them to sell their data to anyone that wants it.
Several states, though, are taking a closer look at how data brokers operate. But the problem is that the state laws are not enough, we need broader prohibitions similar to what was done for banking and healthcare information.
Vermont in 2018 passed a law requiring all businesses that sell or share data on the state’s residents to register in a public database and share information about how they work.
California’s Consumer Privacy Act allows residents to obtain copies of the information that data brokers have uncovered on them. The Act also allows California consumers to request that the information is erased and to opt-out of having their data sold.
The state of New York is considering its own bill to force data brokers to register with the state. The bill would also direct the state’s Attorney General to maintain a website listing these data brokers.
Put The Horse Back In The Barn
Most people said it was impossible to put the horse back in the barn with our private health information, yet it was done effectively a generation ago. The same with our banking information.
What is needed is a new framework similar to the U.S. HIPPA regulations. But we need to go far and deep, including stopping states from freely releasing dangerous information on demand.
The world has changed and big tech did it to us all, but governments willingly went along for the lobbying money ride too! We need to stop this NOW.
SCARS is working to be an advocate for us all on these issues, but you also have to stop being apathetic about your safety.
Will you help us? Historically the victims of these abuses do not help. But now is your chance to prevent what is an underlying cause for the explosion in scamming over the last 3 years.
We will publish more of what you can do. But it starts will helping SCARS through simple donations. If you want to help just visit donate.AgainstScams.org This helps our team to stay in the FTC’s face and help drive home these issues.
If you sit back and watch Rome burn this time it will never get done. Each of you are personally responsible for what happens next!
Now that you know, you cannot un-know.
Make the right decision NOW!
What do you think about this?
Please share your thoughts in a comment below!
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SCARS Printed Books For Every Scam SurvivorSurvivor A Scam Survivor is a victim who has been able to fully accept the reality of their situation. That they were the victim of a crime and are not to blame. They are working on their emotional recovery and reduction of any trauma either on their own, through a qualified support organization, or through counseling or therapy. And has done their duty and reported the crime to their local police, national police, and on Anyscam.com From SCARS Publishing
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Each is based on our SCARS Team’s 32 plus years of experience.
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SCARS GREEN BOOK
Self-Help Self-Paced Recovery Program Guide
LEARN HOW TO RECOVER ON YOUR OWN
This program is designed to help scam victims struggling to recover on their own and for those who want to understand the overall process. You can be using other resources, such as traumaTrauma Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless in a dangerous world. Psychological trauma can leave you struggling with upsetting emotions, memories, and anxiety that won’t go away. It can also leave you feeling numb, disconnected, and unable to trust other people. Traumatic experiences often involve a threat to life or safety or other emotional shocks, but any situation that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and isolated can result in trauma, even if it doesn’t involve physical harm. It’s not the objective circumstances that determine whether an event is traumatic, but your subjective emotional experience of the event. The more frightened and helpless you feel, the more likely you are to be traumatized. Trauma requires treatment, either through counseling or therapy or through trauma-oriented support programs, such as those offered by SCARS. counselingCounseling Counseling is the professional guidance of the individual by utilizing psychological methods especially in collecting case history data, using various techniques of the personal interview, and testing interests and aptitudes. A mental health counselor (MHC), or counselor, is a person who works with individuals and groups to promote optimum mental and emotional health. Such persons may help individuals deal with issues associated with addiction and substance abuse; family, parenting, and marital problems; stress management; self-esteem; and aging. They may also work with "Social Workers", "Psychiatrists", and "Psychologists". SCARS does not provide mental health counseling. or therapy, qualified support groupsSupport Groups In a support group, members provide each other with various types of help, usually nonprofessional and nonmaterial, for a particular shared, usually burdensome, characteristic, such as romance scams. Members with the same issues can come together for sharing coping strategies, to feel more empowered and for a sense of community. The help may take the form of providing and evaluating relevant information, relating personal experiences, listening to and accepting others' experiences, providing sympathetic understanding and establishing social networks. A support group may also work to inform the public or engage in advocacy. They can be supervised or not. SCARS support groups are moderated by the SCARS Team and or volunteers., or completely independent – on your own!
The SCARS Steps program is a complete program and is provided for the purpose of helping scam victims to overcome this experience. Throughout this SCARS Steps Program, we speak about issues and challenges that a victim may have and help guide them through their recovery. But each person is different and it is important to understand your own reasons for being vulnerable to being scammed.
After the trauma of being scammed, you need to take steps to recover and move on. This may be an alternative to counseling in the short term, but we still encourage you to seek out professional help & support. Throughout this SCARS Steps Program, we speak about issues, challenges, defects, or problems that a victim may have in a generalized way.
The SCARS GREEN BOOK will help you recover from your scam offline and it will always be there when you need it!
SCARS SLATE BOOK – Let Us Explain What Happened!
A Guide For Families & Friends Of Scam Victims
HOW TO HELP ROMANCE SCAM VICTIMS FOR FAMILIES & FRIENDS OF SCAM VICTIMS
This SCARS Publishing book represents a complete guide to help the families and friends understand how these scams work and how to help the victim.
The SCARS Slate Book should be purchased by family and friends to better understand what happened to the victim and the traumatic impact on them. But it can also be shared by the victim so that they do not have to explain to family and friends about the scam. This publication is to help others to help Scam Victims to make it through this traumatic experience and recover.
Each person is different and it is important to understand how relationship scamsRelationship Scam A Relationship Scam is a one-to-one criminal act that involves a trust relationship and uses deception & manipulation to get a victim to give to the criminal something of value, such as money! Click here to learn more: What Is A Relationship Scam? work and why people are vulnerable; to being scammed, how they were lured in, then groomed and manipulated. This understanding is essential in helping them through the process of ending the scam and then on to recovery. The SCARS Slate Book will provide the information necessary to help support a victim through this process.
SCARS RED BOOK
Your Personal Scam Evidence & Crime Record Organizer
ORGANIZE YOUR INFORMATION TO MAKE THE REPORTING PROCESS SIMPLE!
Helps you get and stay organized. This publication is to help Scam Victims organize their crime information. Complete this information before reporting to the police then bring this book with you
Before or after reporting to the police the RED BOOK gives you a dedicated tool to record all the essential facts of this crime. The Victim, the Scammers, the Money, and your Police interactions. Everything that really matters can be easily recorded for your immediate use and for the future!
As we have seen, money recovery/repayment programs can become available years after the scam ends and you need to keep all the details of this crime in case it is needed. We have also seen scammers being extradited to the U.S. and other countries, this will help in the event you testify or give statements, Additionally, this helps you have your information ready to qualify for victims’ benefits, compensation, or aid.
The Official SCARS RED BOOK is your way of recording all the important facts of this crime so that you do not lose essential information, Complete the RED BOOK then put it away with the confidence that you will have it if or when it is needed.
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