The practice of buying Americans’ data has become routine, effectively hollowing out both Carpenter v. United States and privacy safeguards enacted by Congress. Any company or government can go out and purchase customers’ data that the company has collected. Just last year, Avast was caught selling their customers’ data for the second time1. Their customers use their service to protect their information and prevent it from being sold, but Avast decided it was more profitable to sell that data rather than protect it.
Businesses have determined that it is more profitable to sell their customer’s data rather than protect it. Laws like GDPR and CCPA provide the legal framework for consumer protection but more needs to be done for the business community. We need to expect more from our Technology Providers. Customer data should be protected and should be at the core of any cybersecurity product. The monetary value gained from selling customer’s data isn’t worth the trust that is lost once that data has been sold. As a Public Benefit Corporation, Grey Market Labs believes protecting individual activity and organizational data is the foundation of trustworthy companies. As organizations look for companies to protect them, Public Benefit Corporations should be the first to consider, ensuring your information is kept private.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Grey Market Labs is a Public Benefit Corporation founded with the social mission to protect life online. We build revolutionary software and hardware products, and partner with like-minded industry leaders, to create a future with “privacy-as-a-service”.
Simply: we prevent data from being compromised and protect our customers’ work, online.
