Epsilon to pay $150M in settlement with U.S. Department of Justice
As part of a remediation agreement, Epsilon will pay a total of $150M including $127.5M in compensation victims of fraud schemes resulting from sale of Epsilon data. The company had used data modeling to build and sell lists of customers, many elderly, deemed most likely to respond to marketing solicitation.
In a clear demonstration of how difficult it can be for consumers to exercise their privacy rights, Consumer Reports found that even trained agents could not get many requests done successfully. Utilizing California's "authorized agent" provision, 124 Consumer Reports agents reached out to 21 companies, including Airbnb, Amazon, Comcast, Home Depot and Starbucks to use Data Subject Access Requests (DSAR) and other company privacy preference mechanisms to make account changes.
The company disputes the charges but Canada’s privacy watchdog plans to proceed with actions if Clearview doesn’t cease collecting biometric data on citizens and delete all previously collected.
Salesforce has reversed course on its bid to acquire data management and integration platform Informatica a source has told Reuters. Informatica itself said that it is not in talks to be acquired. Salesforce stocks rose on this latest news while Informatica’s fell.