> If the issue access to the data, then maybe we should ask if this data should be collected in the first place.
Outlawing the collection of data would be hard and is unlikely to work, but the fact that companies like AT&T are allowed to sell your data, as they did with OP's (where else would that unused phone number come from), is an angle new legislation can use.
The EU now already has a piece of legislation aimed at stifling these practices. The US and other economies just need to follow suit.
I'm more thinking that not all data is equal. We really treat it like it is, at least from the public perspective (it clearly isn't from the perspective of those gathering data, but there's a clear disparity in how these groups view things). Some data is actually necessary to give up to have a well functioning internet (what browser you're using) and some data is not (canvas fingerprinting). There's a tough question here because the people making the decision of what data to be used is not us. It is the websites we visit. I would argue that there is no consent being given here and all is assumed to be "common consent" (which I'm using as a lack for better terms. Things like that if you walk out in public people can see you. But conversely, someone can't run up to you and measure your height with a tape measure). There has to be some balance here. What that is, I don't know. But really the only people that can figure that out are us computer nerds who at least kinda understand these things. We have to be having these discussions, or else it becomes "fuck silicon valley" (a conversation that is becoming national). So if we don't think about these things, then we clearly live in a bubble and bubbles burst. If we do think about these things, maybe we don't live in a bubble.
I was recently told how private detectives from a national agency would actually go door-to-door (over a minimal area) under the pretext of AT&T store / sales employees. They’d try to convince their target (and some incidental neighbors as cover) to switch their bundled services to AT&T.
The private agents were armed with the latest available discounts (which you could find for yourself if you tried). But their skills made them particularly more successful than a typical front-line sales employee.
The catch? It wasn’t a scam, and they really were trying to get their targets to switch. It seems that AT&T was more willing to sell consumer data than the general public is aware of. Converting their targets to AT&T granted their agency access to additional data which they then to passed onto their clients. And the target gets a discount, too. Win-Win-Win? :)
It seems like that is starting to happen with California's new data privacy law. I'm starting to get a lot of privacy policy update emails like I did when GDPR took effect.
Outlawing the collection of data would be hard and is unlikely to work, but the fact that companies like AT&T are allowed to sell your data, as they did with OP's (where else would that unused phone number come from), is an angle new legislation can use.
The EU now already has a piece of legislation aimed at stifling these practices. The US and other economies just need to follow suit.