The company later apologized for the incident, but the episode made clear that there are too few safeguards in the marketing industry. The Franks bill is a good idea. Another approach is to design systems that limit the collection of personal information and avoid the risk that data might be misused. This is very good from a privacy perspective. One company that is exploring anonymous payment schemes is Digicash.
Some information is obtained through public records such as land records.
Other information is obtained in ways that might be considered deceptive or fraudulent. For example, consumer warranty cards and consumer surveys produce a great deal of information that is resold by information brokers and direct marketers. Still other information is clearly sold illegally as when it was revealed that employees of the Social Security Administration were selling records to information brokers. One of the current problems with the marketing industry is that there are few incentives to limit the misuse of personal information. As long as data has value, it is likely to be sold unless there are penalties to stop this practice.