The data mining industry is booming with no signs of slowing down thanks to increasing integration with other systems like facial recognition and an increasing reluctance to comply with any and all requests from users to maintain privacy.
Now a group of the largest data mining companies admitted to a bipartisan body of legislators in the House that they indeed mine social networks like Facebook for personal information which they then sell to third parties for advertising and “other purposes,” according to Hillicon Valley.
The admission came after Reps. Edward Markey and Joe Barton along with others “sent letters to nine major data brokerage companies asking how they collect, assemble and sell consumer information to third parties.”
Harte-Hanks, one of the firms that responded to the letters claimed that they only collect information “in accordance with [the social networking sites’] terms of service, and as authorized by the users.”
Similarly, Intelius stated that they only gather publicly available information like “screen names, website addresses, professional history, and interests.”
Other companies responding to the legislators’ letters said that they indeed collect and sell personal information but they don’t actually mine the data from social networking sites.