The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is withdrawing a proposal to crack down on the data brokers that profit from buying and selling our most sensitive personal information at industrial scale. The proposed rules—“Protecting Americans from Harmful Data Broker Practices”—would have clarified that many data brokers are “consumer reporting agencies” under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), meaning they must comply with the FCRA’s privacy and accuracy requirements.
Data brokers impose severe harm on consumers by degrading privacy, threatening national security, enabling scams and fraud against consumers, putting public officials and survivors of domestic violence in danger, and exacerbating discrimination against immigrant populations. The FCRA establishes important obligations for consumer reporting agencies concerning data collection, sales, and retention. Clarifying that the FCRA covers a wide range of data brokers would mitigate many of the downstream consumer privacy, safety, and economic harms that the industry causes.