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Technology has become so important in our lives that it is almost impossible to go through a day without using some electronic device with which we are used to search on the Internet, use apps, and, even if we are not aware of it, give a lot of information through our devices. The impressive thing is that many of us don’t know what is happening while we are doing activities that seem normal and even secure with our phones or computers, but the reality is that it is not as safe as we may think. It is every time something more typical to hear about data brokers, those as we saw on the video, are companies that collect and aggregate consumer information from a wide range of sources to create detailed profiles of individuals, and after they sell or share our personal information with others. These “companies” can collect this information from various sources like government and public records such as court filings, real property and tax assessor records, self-reported information directly from consumers through warranty cards, sweepstakes entries, contests, and surveys, social media sites such as Facebook, purchase or licensing of information from other data brokers, retailers, and financial institutions, and cooperative arrangements through which companies provide information about their customers in exchange for information to enhance their existing customer lists or identify new customers.
Many are against this practice, but there still are people that claim that these practice of data brokers have some benefits and they even defend this practice as something ethical.
To consider something as ethical, it must provide good or do the least harm, it should protect and respect individual rights, it should be equal or fair, and protect the common good. Just by knowing what data brokerage is about, we should presume that it is far from being something that we can consider ethical, but for many people that defend this phenomenon this is not only something normal or beneficial for everyone, but it seems that it is also something ethical. After analyzing this phenomenon, its pros and cons, and even considering the arguments of it defenders, we think that is an unethical act in every aspect of it. Just by thinking that someone can be right now monitoring every action that we do on our computers is something that goes beyond our privacy, and that totally invades our personal space. For us, data brokerage is far from being something ethical, it