"On Tuesday the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published a long anticipated proposed rule change around how data brokers handle peoples’ sensitive information, including their name and address, which would introduce increased limits on when brokers can distribute such data. Researchers have shown how foreign adversaries are able to easily purchase such information, and 404 Media previously revealed that this particular data supply chain is linked to multiple acts of violence inside the cybercriminal underground that has spilled over to victims in the general public too.

The proposed rule in part aims to tackle the distribution of credit header data. This is the personal information at the top of a credit report which doesn’t discuss the person’s actual lines of credit. But currently credit header data is distributed so widely, to so many different companies, that it ends up in the hands of people who use it maliciously."

https://www.404media.co/u-s-government-tries-to-stop-data-brokers-that-help-dox-people-through-credit-data/

"The United States government’s leading consumer protection watchdog announced Tuesday the first steps in a plan to crack down on predatory data broker practices that the agency says help fuel scams, violence, and threats to US national security.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is proposing a rule that would allow regulators to police data brokers under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a landmark privacy law enacted more than a half century ago. Under the proposal, data brokers would be limited in their ability to sell certain sensitive personal information, including financial data and credit scores, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, and addresses. The CFPB says that closing the loopholes allowing data brokers to trade in this data with little to no oversight will benefit vulnerable people and the US as a whole."

https://www.wired.com/story/cfpb-fcra-data-broker-oversight/