Senator Markey plans to reintroduce legislation to require accountability and transparency for data brokers like Equifax that are collecting and selling personal and sensitive information about consumers

Washington (July 22, 2019) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, released the following statement after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a settlement with Equifax of potentially up to $700 million over a 2017 data breach that exposed the personal information of more than 147 million people.

“For years, Equifax compiled dossiers on American consumers on a massive scale and then played fast and loose with that data,” said Senator Markey. “The ensuing data breach wreaked havoc on consumers’ security and well-being and shed light on the need to regulate this ‘shadow’ industry of surreptitious data collection. This settlement is far from an adequate solution to our society’s data broker problem, and we have to do much more to stop the next breach before it happens. I will be reintroducing my Data Broker Accountability and Transparency Act to provide consumers with the right to stop data brokers from using, sharing, or selling their information for marketing purposes and require data brokers to institute comprehensive privacy and data security programs.”

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