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Our online behavior has become too valuable for our reasons in this digital age. Every time we turn on a browser page to the Internet, start up a social media site or even make an online purchase, we leave behind a trail of digital breadcrumbs: data that can be collected, analyzed, and sold to interested parties. A data broker is, therefore, any firm specializing in the collection, aggregation, and sale of our data to interested parties like advertisers and marketers.  
Data brokers operate in dark shadows, often never revealing their identity to us or even seeking our consent. Their inventions vary from cookies to device fingerprinting and from social media scraping to collect data about us. After that, they turn around and do detailed profiling for demographic, interest, behavior, and preference inclusion. Advertisement buyers purchase these profiles and use them to create advertisements that are tailored to the targeted individuals' characteristics.  
The data broker industry is huge—an number-estimated 4,000 to 5,000 companies only in the United States. Some are big players in the business, such as Acxiom, Experian, and Equifax. These have accrued major databases containing personal information that helps them raise their revenues to billions every year.  
How Data Brokers Track Your Online Behavior  
How does a data broker track your activities over the Internet? Well, it's pretty basic—by following up on and analyzing what you do digitally, almost based on the techniques used in collecting data. Most of the common methods include:  
Tracking Cookies  
Tracking cookies are small text-based files that a website and advertisers leave behind on the user's device. They allow corporations to track the activities of users across the Internet: which websites are visited and how they progress, which pages are viewed, and the advertisements clicked. This allows companies to identify a device and browser type, thus creating a user profile based on online activities.  
Device Fingerprinting  
Device fingerprinting is a process of collecting data Learn more about BlockShopper your device, like the type of operating system, browser, and resolution of your screen. Often, this information may prove enough to identify a device—thereby, its online behaviors—even in cases where cookies are deleted or if a VPN is used.  
Social Media Scraping  
Social media scraping is the collection of data from all forms of social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other. This includes personal information in your profile and anything posted, liked, or shared on these platforms. Data brokers use all of this information to create very detailed profiles about your interests and behaviors.  
Mobile Device Tracking  
Mobile device tracking refers to the process of collecting data from a person's mobile device on their location, the apps they use, and their browser history. This information, through a process called targeted advertising, can result in specific ads being sent directly to your mobile device—even if you are offline.  
How Targeted Ads Impact  
Targeted advertising is a lucrative industry that generates billions of dollars in revenue each year. But what are the implications of this industry on our privacy and security? Here are some of the key concerns:  
Privacy Concerns  
This form of advertising seriously violates personal privacy because it involves our personal data collection and tandem analysis without knowledge or consent. Data used to construct detailed profiles about us is manipulated to change behaviors and preferences.  
Security Risks  
There are also some risks to security with targeted advertising, as sensitive data is collected and transmitted. This data could be vulnerable to hacking and other types of cyber attacks that may result in identity theft and financial fraud.  
Manipulation and Discrimination  
It can be used to manipulate our behaviors and preferences, very often running against our interest in well-being. An advertiser might, for example, use targeted advertisement techniques to display a given number of unhealthy products or services or in ways that exploit our vulnerabilities and raise fears.  
No Transparency or Accountability  
The industry behind targeted advertisements is neither transparent nor liable, so we all wondered how our data gets used and by whom. There was also no transparency to cause an obstacle to holding companies liable for their activities.