Political Data Gathering Blowback from Epsilon?
By m3047
Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 03:26:07 PM PST
Section: Diary
Topic: Campaign and Governmental Ethics
Having watched this issue for years, I doubt it.
However, a new dimension has been added with the revelation that Epsilon, a commercial marketing/email services firm, reportedly sells products based on political affinity/party.
Epsilon, if you don't already know, was the
target of a data breach which has led to consumers receiving notifications (incidentally these are usually from Epsilon, on behalf of their B2B customers)... oftentimes multiple notifications.
Who does Epsilon sell this information to, and what do they use it for? Use of political views for discriminatory purposes is supposed to be illegal... unless you're a politician, of course.
As long as politicians want their "candy", it is as inevitable that this information, once collected, will be monetized for questionable purposes as it is unlikely that politicians will do anything about it.
Nonetheless the cat is out of the bag: a company that collects this information and ostensibly sells it for non-political commercial purposes has been hacked and suffered at least a partial data breach.