Have you ever wondered where all that personal information you shared with Amazon, or Disney or even Carnival Cruise Lines ended up? Now, you can find out and even delete it.
Under the new general data protection regulation, GDPR, consumers have the right to review their personal information, known as “electronic information assets” collected by companies and marketing firms.
According to Felix Torres, chief technology officer for Orlando-based List Management Services, the data is considered gold for hackers trying to breach personal information.
“There is a black market and data is valuable across the board," Torres said. “All data leads to something, especially if it is personally identifiable.”
LMS has an estimated 900 clients, including Disney, Universal and Carnival Cruise Lines.
“It’s really being transparent with the actual consumer itself,” Torres said. “What the data is being used for and how it’s being used."
The company, established in 1995, is currently working to make sure 35 companies are compliant with the new regulation that went into effect on May 25.
LMS designs custom programs for each company to make sure potential hackers do not breach a client’s archive system and respective consumers have easy access to their own personal profiles.
Consumers' personal profiles including age, address, credit card number, is an electronic information asset, in theory, sold many times to various marketing firms.
According to Torres, all companies dealing with consumer information and data should already have a method in place to secure the information assets and offer transparency to consumers.
Companies should have a method in place that allows consumers to “specifically ask, 'How are you using my data?“ Torres said. “There should be a link or page where you can completely unsubscribe from any marketing material or your data overall.”
Torres said it can be any merchant from the local pizza shop to a global company.
In terms of internet hacking attempts, Torres says he sees at least “150 attempts every day through multiple methods” where they are trying to “brute force” a website by trying to crack a password to get in or “execute potential code on the back of the website.
Follow these links to see if your data has been collected:
https://www.universalorlando.com/web/en/us/privacy-info-center/index.html
http://www.carnivalcorp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=140690&p=irol-privacy
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=468496
Facebook is a large data collector, this is the location you can download a copy of your data.