DCUC Raises Concern on Recent Study's Findings: Data Brokers and the Sale of Data on U.S. Military Personnel

Anthony Hernandez

A recent study conducted by Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, funded by the United States Military Academy (USMA), found that military personnel are at great risk of having their personal information collected and widely distributed at little cost. The findings also raise concerns of potential threats to National security.

The researchers conducted the study after previously discovering data brokers were advertising data about current and former U.S. military personnel.

The study's key takeaways are:

• It is not difficult to obtain sensitive data about active-duty members of the military, their families, and veterans, including non-public, individually identified, and sensitive data, such as health data, financial data, and information about religious practices. The team bought this and other data from U.S. data brokers via a .org and a .asia domain for as low as $0.12 per record. Location data is also available, though the team did not purchase it.
• Data broker methods of determining the identity of customers are inconsistent and evidence a lack of industry best-practices.
• Currently, these inconsistent practices are highly unregulated by the U.S. government.
• The inconsistencies of controls when purchasing sensitive, non-public, individually identified data about active-duty members of the military and veterans extends to situations in which data brokers are selling to customers who are outside of the United States.
• Access to this data could be used by foreign and malicious actors to target active-duty military personnel, veterans, and their families and acquaintances for profiling, blackmail, targeting with information campaigns, and more.

As many are aware, military members are always vulnerable to financial predators, whether outside the gate or in many online apps.

DCUC President/CEO Anthony Hernandez states "This is why defense credit unions are important and why DCUC aims to preserve things such as the "one bank and one credit union" rule on all military installations. It is why we continue to oppose routing financial data on cheap, unsecured networks, and why we believe merchants should do more to protect data just like all financial institutions."

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