Published in Media and Society After Technological Disruption (K. Langvardt & G. Hurwitz eds., 2024).

Abstract

This chapter examines how data brokers, companies that collect, sell, and trade personal information, enable and intensify interpersonal abuse. The article analyzes the data brokerage industry’s role in undermining personal obscurity, the relative safety that comes from being difficult to find or understand, and explores how current laws not only fail to address these harms but can make them worse. The chapter argues that existing privacy regimes, particularly those requiring victims to request data removal from individual brokers, impose psychological burdens and can retraumatize victims.

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