Feature The US Federal Trade Commission warned Monday that data brokers must rethink how they define sensitive data in light of recent regulatory actions involving antivirus vendor Avast and location data providers X-Mode and InMarket. Europe is also moving in this area.
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The US Trade Watchdog has decided that browser and location data should be considered sensitive, and that – despite the absence of personally identifiable information (PII) claims in the datasets for the above companies – what makes this sensitive is what can be gleaned from it.
"Years of research show that datasets often contain sensitive and personally identifiable information even when they contain no traditional stand-alone elements of PII, and re-identification is becoming easier every day – especially for datasets with the precision of those at issue in the FTC's proposed complaint against Avast, X-Mode and InMarket," the commission explained.
Two weeks ago, the agency settled its complaint against security vendor Avast for $16.5 million based on allegations that the company used a "unique and persistent device identifier" with its Jumpshot analytics business to track Internet users' activities — including "every web page visited, exact timestamp, type of device and browser, and city, state, and country."
