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Black Market For Your Personal Data: What You Need To Know

Big Cajun Man

That is an excellent question these days. I continue to have all my information stolen at various data breaches, including Desjardins, Equifax and recently Capital One. To keep me safe, I follow a simple set of rules to at least impede the had folk out there:

Personal Data Selling
  1. Change Passwords Often (every 6 months at least)
  2. Run Antivirus and Malware protection programs
  3. Stay away from nasty websites that may simply be Phishing front ends

You do not want to be another victim of the many personal data breaches.

The other way your personal data ends up out there is by companies selling your data to other companies (for-profit and fun). Every time you give out your email address or fill in your “customer profile” you are giving someone a chance to profit from that personal data. Everyone is selling you. How can you slow this down?

Our friend Preet Banerjee put out a set of valuable tweets to figure out who is selling your data:

  1. Gmail ignores anything after a ‘+’ sign in an email address. If your email address is example@gmail.com, sending email to example+test@gmail.com still goes to example@gmail.com
  2. So if you must provide an email address, and company XYZ asks for it, give them an example: +xyz@gmail.com.
  3. If you ever get spam addressed to example+xyz@gmail.com, you know that XYZ company gave up / sold your info.
  4. This works because you still get email addressed to example+xyz@gmail.com to your example@gmail.com.
  5. Using this technique, you can create an unlimited number of email addresses. For example, you can replace “+xyz” with “+anycompanynameyouwant” in the email address you provide them.

Actual Personal Data Tweet

I believe I owe Preet a scotch for this one. Remember he is available as an excellent public speaker too!

https://x.com/preetbanerjee/status/1156957513159454721
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