There is a measure of you much greater than your credit score. Your secret consumer score is now what’s getting attention. It determines whether you can be trusted online. A handful of companies know a lot more about you than you would ever imagine.  And what they collect about you will decide what you do and don’t get in life.

Sift is one of the secret consumer score data collectors with a proprietary system that tracks 16,000 different data points about you. For example, they likely know what sandwich you ordered through an app and when, returns you make from online purchases, and posts made on AirBnb & Yelp.

For Data collectors you end up with scores that are less about a number, but instead categorized in some cases: “Abuse” or “Non-Abuse”, “Normal” or “Fraud”, “Account Takeover” vs. “Not Account Takeover”.

What right do you have to see what data is collected by these very detailed harvesters? Not much. California leads the way in consumer data protection laws. And although the recently passed California Consumer Privacy Act is set to go in effect in 2020, some companies are being more transparent ahead of the mandate to provide consumers the private data being gathered on them. Many allow you to follow a path to request all of the personal data they’ve gathered on you.

How to Get Your Data

Data harvesting companies do not make it easy to get the information gathered on you. Here are 5 data mining companies that do offer a greater level of transparency and a change for you to get data collected about you. Often you will need to prove your identity with a copy of your drivers license.

Kustomer – email privacy@kustomer.com to view a history of your past experiences and current sentiment gathered.

Retail Equation – email returnactivityreport@theretailequation.com to see if your purchase return should be rejected or accepted

Riskified – email privacy@riskified.com to learn if you are being seen as a potential fraud risk

Sift – email privacy@sift.com and they will send you a google form to fill out before they send your ‘consumer trustworthiness’

Zeta Global – link to a privacy request page to see if you are labeled as person with a lot of money to spend.

Many of the data mining companies are simply getting ahead of laws about to go into effect in California that are modeled after the privacy laws in the European Union that require companies to share what they know about you. Now that we know about these secret scoring companies, it’s time we learn what they have on us and anyone you decide to share this article with.

More of my privacy related articles here