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Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
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On its website TransUnion says clients can use its TLO database for fraud mitigation, determining business risk, insurance claims management, and more.“Find likely locations, telephones, assets, liens, bankruptcies, fraud history and much more,” TLO’s website reads.The real estate firm’s website of scraped data includes thousands of PDFs of results from searches on TLO concerning specific people.Igor Ostrovskiy, a New York based private investigator with Ostro Intelligence, previously told Motherboard that TLO’s data contains “very powerful information that can help professionals with fraud investigations. Or can help criminals commit fraud as well as a variety of other crimes.”“Data security is TransUnion’s top priority. To ensure that TLOxp information is used only as permitted and appropriate, we deploy comprehensive safeguards, including rigorous credentialing of all users, strict access controls, and ongoing monitoring,” David Blumberg, senior director of public relations at TransUnion, told Motherboard in an emailed statement. Consumer credit reporting giant TransUnion runs TLO.“We also utilize tools to proactively scan for references to TLOxp on the web to uncover any potential misuse of data. In those cases, fraudsters often pull data from other sources and misrepresent it as TLOxp data. In the rare case we determine that one of our customers has misused TLOxp data, we immediately terminate access and coordinate with law enforcement to help prosecute those criminals,” Blumberg added.In December, Senator Ron Wyden urged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to stop credit agencies from selling Americans data.“These data brokers are serving as shady middlemen to sell this personal information without any legal protections,” Wyden wrote to CFPB Director Rohit Chopra in the letter. “CFPB must rein in the sale of Americans’ data by credit agencies for non-credit related purposes.”Subscribe to our cybersecurity podcast, CYBER. Subscribe to our new Twitch channel.Do you know anything else about data selling or scraping like this? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.