The US Federal Trade Commission on Monday warned that data brokers need to rethink how they define sensitive data in light of recent enforcement actions involving antivirus vendor Avast, and location data providers X-Mode and InMarket. Europe too is moving in this area and crackdowns move around the world.
The US trade watchdog has decided that browsing and location data should be considered sensitive, and that – despite the absence of allegations about personally identifiable information (PII) within the datasets of the above businesses – what makes this stuff sensitive is what can be inferred from it.