California-based data brokerage firm Background Alert has been shut down by the California Privacy Protection Agency for three years over its failure to list under the state's registry as mandated under the state's Delete Act, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
Background Alert's utilization of billions of public records and inferencing to establish profiles that include people who may be related to the searched individual is concerning, said CPPA. "Seemingly innocuous data points, when combined with other data points, can be exploited to infer highly personal characteristics about people. Consumers can be identified, re-identified, and profiled as a result," CPPA noted in its order. Such a development comes amid the state's ongoing clampdown on unregistered data brokers. "California, along with states like Texas, has been at the leading edge of reining in the data brokerage industry and tackling its myriad harms to people's privacy, safety, and security," said Electronic Privacy Information Center's Justin Sherman.
