data brokers2 articles
US Troops Are Still Being Tracked Through Commercial Location Data. Congress Is Losing Patience.
US lawmakers Senator Ron Wyden and Rep. Pat Harrigan have requested a Defense Department Inspector General investigation into why US military personnel can still be tracked via commercially purchased location data, despite measures taken to address the issue. While several military branches have disabled advertising identifiers on government-issued devices, location data tied to troops continues to be available, possibly due to delayed implementation, the insufficiency of disabling ad IDs alone, or data leaking from personal devices of personnel and contractors. Security researchers warn that adversarial nations like Russia and China may have been accessing this data through programmatic advertising auctions, posing a significant threat to military personnel, particularly those in combat zones.
I Asked 100 Companies For My Data. Several Deleted It Instead.
When a journalist filed over 100 data access requests under the California Consumer Privacy Act, they encountered widespread non-compliance, with some companies — like Crunchbase and BeenVerified — deleting their data instead of providing it, despite explicit instructions not to. Others, like Cash App, effectively refused to process requests through channels their own privacy policies listed as valid options. Consumer advocates and legal experts argue these failures highlight how current frameworks place too much burden on individuals and that stronger "data minimization" rules — limiting what companies can collect in the first place — would better protect consumers.