Data, the new gold. Or welcome to the dark side.

Scammer using you data?

Like it or not your opinions and information about yourself is valuable.  Retailers, service providers and yes, crooks.

The amount of information about each of us that is available for free or for sale online is frightening! There are hundreds of legal data brokers buying and selling this information. There are also lots of cybercriminals who use this, and stolen information for their own gain?

Many of these masquerade as compensation advisers, Diesel emissions claims, missold mortgages etc. in the first instance they've already identified you as having a propensity to pursue claims.

A large industry has developed clever ways of mining that data from you, ...methods range from asking you your opinion to asking you deep questions about your finances. 

With the advent of the internet comes a lot of white noise and a lot of retailers and service providers are looking at new ways of targeting their products and services to the people who are most likely to buy why a big industry growth the past 10-years has been lead Generation companies  This is where companies will glean the information from you you such as who your gas and electric are with have you made a will, do you have life cover, did you transfer a pension who is your mortgage with etc?

Claims companies, Financial service firms and advisors who pay handsomely for information which will help them identify an individual's need  or say a will and it's not just financial services many other services such as travel agents, vehicle suppliers garages all would like to have the data at hand to know which individuals I likely to be making a purchase soon in what area. 

Who buys this data? 

...typically it's people at firms who in the past  would have relied on advertising in newspapers and and mailshots, these mediums are are becoming extinct, financial services firms travel agents claims companies funeral companies to name a few you will pay handsomely for information identifying individuals as potential leads.

The dark side.

Your data can and will find its way to scammers. Well informed, well spoken scammers. So they know you've a pension plan from a previous employer? Your rung from "the company dealing with winding up that scheme" who seems to be aware of all the story, well who wouldn't trust her? 


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