On January 1st, a new Vermont statute dealing with data brokers
went into effect. Data brokers are businesses that collect personal
information about consumers and sell that information to other
businesses. Data brokers collect information from multiple public
and non-public sources such as court records, property records,
voter registration information, purchase histories and web-browsing
activity. Data brokers create profiles of consumers and sell the
profiles to businesses who want to use them for targeted marketing
purposes. Vermont is the first state in the U.S. to regulate data
brokers.
In the data broker statute, the Vermont legislature noted that
consumers may not be aware that data brokers are collecting
information about them or that they even exist. This is in contrast
to businesses with whom consumers have a direct relationship.
Consumers who have a direct relationship with traditional and
e-commerce businesses may have some level of knowledge and
