The Dangers of Aggregated Consumer Data

In the age where user data is aggregated for marketing and advertising purposes on a daily basis with consent from users themselves, the entire concept of “privacy” has become somewhat perverted: the line that marks your personal space begins to blur when you realize that corporates know your food preferences better than you.

And once you discover that supposedly anonymous aggregated consumer data — the data on individuals collected through different devices compiled for use in summarized form — can be used to track your movements with 73% to 91% percent accuracy, things begin to look pretty Orwellian; not to mention that anyone can learn about your recent purchases on certain websites.

Although there are countless ways in which malefactors can use your personal data such as home address or phone number for illicit purposes, there is little to no chance that anyone other than prankers might be interested in it. The actual danger, however, can come from sharing your financial information with data aggregators. These services gather data from your various financial accounts in one place to allow for the better management of your finances (e.g. tax planning or budgeting).

According to FINRA, many financial institutions share this info with data aggregators — with the consent of users, of course, but it’s important to know that by sharing such info, you could put your financial security at risk, making yourself vulnerable to cyber fraud and even identity theft.

If you want to avoid these dangers, it’s important to be aware of how precisely such data is shared: the most obvious way to prevent your financial information from falling into the wrong hands is to carefully study the terms and conditions of user agreements you sign. Learn what types of data are being collected and make sure that data aggregators don’t have access to the info you would rather not share. Also, when you stop using the service, make sure that you terminate the access to your financial info — otherwise you continue exposing yourself to the risks mentioned above.

These are the basic rules you should consider when sharing your financial data. When it comes to personal data exploitation, it should be pointed out that unlike other services that gather user data for commercial purposes, Humans.net is a decentralized platform, which means that data is not owned by anyone other than users themselves and cannot be used unless they give permission. Privacy is guaranteed as each user has a unique access key and users who agree to have their data used for marketing receive 30% of revenue generated from advertising. Humans.net aims to revolutionize the way people work with one another — and completely change the way they interact with personal data as well.