The data selling business, its practices and consequences in social ethics

The wealth of digital information and personal data freely accessible on the Web has encouraged many companies, known as data brokers, to exploit such resources. These entities gather and process large amounts of information to later sell them to other companies. Today, the combined relevance of Internet services in people's lives and the advancements in big data analysis allows data brokers to retain larger and larger quantities of remarkably precise and sensitive personal data. It becomes therefore necessary to enforce the principles of transparency and ethical usage of consumer information.