Consumer Privacy

Anyone in the world can find the home address of almost anyone living in the United States with just their first name, date of birth, and state - the most common information available on any social media profile. This is the result of unrestricted data sales between private companies and marketers.

Your information is sold directly to marketers by many important businesses most Americans tend to trust implicitly: your cell carrier, the manufacturer of your car, the USPS, and even your state’s voting records. This information is then collected by "data aggregators", who will sell it online to anyone who wants it, often giving it away for free.

This is why you get spam calls that know your name, junk mail that knows which type of vehicle you drive, and online advertisements targeted to your interests.

This poses a chilling effect on speech. You always run the risk of people trying to look up information about you when you enter public discussion, but unlike almost any other country in the world, Americans are uniquely at risk of being ‘doxed’ with a trivial amount of information. Marketers have made a game out of collecting billions of data points about hundreds of millions of people, and sloshing that information around to the highest bidder, all just so they can sell you things you don’t even want. It is senseless and destructive.