Washington Post: Credit Firm Told to Stop Selling Data . The U.S. Court of Appeals ruling on Friday means that Trans Union Corp. — which maintains extensive files on almost 200 million adults — will be prohibited from using credit report information about mortgages, auto loans and lines of credit to build and sell marketing lists without permission.
This is excellent news on the privacy front. Of the three big credit reporting companies, Trans Union has earned a dismal reputation among privacy advocates as an arrogant and callous outfit.
There’s a war going on, pitting those who care about privacy against the big corporations that make a business of collecting and selling dossiers on us individually and as groups. The corporations have been winning almost every battle until recently.
You can almost feel the climate changing around them. But that will not be the end of it. The invaders of privacy see a threat to their businesses, and they will wage political war in Washington to prevent anything from interfering with their self-proclaimed right to treat your most personal information as a commodity to be bought, sold and traded like pieces of silver.