Data Broker Breaches Fueled Nearly $21 Billion in Identity-Theft Losses

A report copublished by WIRED sparked a probe into opt-out pages hidden by data brokers. Now congressional Democrats say breaches tied to the industry have cost people tens of billions of dollars.

Congressional Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee say they’ve identified more than $20.9 billion in consumer losses tied to identity theft connected to four major breaches involving data broker firms. The estimate was released Friday in a minority report stemming from a months-long inquiry into data broker practices launched by United States senator Maggie Hassan.

Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat and the JEC’s ranking member, sent investigative requests to five major data brokers—Comscore, Findem, IQVIA Digital, Telesign, and 6Sense Insights—in August after an investigation by The Markup and CalMatters, copublished by WIRED, found some data brokers were hiding opt-out tools from Google and other search engines using “no index” instructions that tell web ...