Data Brokers Unveiled: Impacts, Regulations, and Safeguards in the Digital Economy

In an increasingly digital economy, unprecedented amounts of personal information are now accessible to companies and other entities. Private companies are collecting, processing, analyzing, and sharing vast quantities of data about individuals for a multitude of purposes. Troublingly, the vast majority of Americans are unaware of what data is being collected, when it is being collected, how it is being collected, by whom, and for what purposes. Data brokers and technology companies, including large social media platforms and search engines, play a central role in gathering extensive amounts of personal information, often without direct interaction with individuals, especially in the case of data brokers.