Today, we are excited to announce our latest research exposing the massively networked personal information sharing happening between and across identity resolution and customer data platforms that has been hiding in plain sight for over 10 years. These industries are the plumbing backbone in synthesizing personal data from hundreds of data sources—across services, devices, and spanning the digital world and the physical world.
In February 2024, Cracked Labs published “Pervasive identity surveillance for marketing purposes”, an in-depth analysis of LiveRamp’s RampID identity graph. One of the most superficial yet most powerful functions of this excellent report was to guide attention towards industries responsible for pervasive consumer surveillance. The timing was excellent as I’d already committed to present “The Hidden Identity Infrastructure” at Identiverse (May 2024) and prompted by the report, I dug in to better understand the two industries underpinning hidden identity infrastructure, namely, Identity Resolution (ID Res) and Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).
There are nearly $9T worth of industries worldwide that rely on persistent, hidden identification of people. Naturally, demand of this magnitude fueled the now mature industries that perform pervasive, universal identification of people and their personal information. ISL identified over 350 companies providing either identity resolution platforms, customer data platforms, or both.
This paper explores the magnitude and reach of these two industries, how they came to be, and most importantly, why, from a human well-being perspective, it’s crucial that these kinds of platforms be held to higher regulatory standards of scrutiny, transparency, and accountability. One identity resolution company alone out of 93 such companies (worldwide) boasts the collection of 5,000 data elements for [each of] 700 million consumers in 2021. To put this in perspective, the number of user accounts breached worldwide in 2023 was about 300 million1. Is there an appreciable difference between stolen user data and undisclosed “legitimate” personally identifiable information sharing? Moreover, nearly 40% of the 93 companies that provide identity resolution platforms are registered data brokers.
Indeed, after reviewing the research, we must ask ourselves, is this the kind of world we want to live in: a world where everything about us is always known by industry; a world where the ongoing surveillance of people is deemed necessary in the name of capitalism. Is this the kind of world in which humans and societies will flourish or self-destruct? Are humans more than capitalistic consumers? Are we more than our purchasing potential?
A Call to Action
ISL conducted this research to help illuminate the sizable risk of hidden identification and the worldwide web of user surveillance. ISL believes naming and exposure is crucial to effecting change. Identification resolution and customer data platforms have been hiding in plain sight for more than a decade, and yet even the “identerati” are largely unfamiliar with these industries. How can we expect everyday people to know?
This paper is a rallying call for privacy advocates to come together to demand greater regulatory scrutiny, transparency and oversight for these industries, in conjunction with more meaningful data broker regulation.
Additionally, this is a rallying call to acknowledge the catastrophic failure of notice and consent as a valid permissioning mechanism for highly complex and interconnected digital services. It’s inconceivable that people understand the magnitude of data sharing that consenting to sharing “your data with our marketing” entails.
We must ask ourselves if this is the kind of world we want for ourselves and our children, where our preferences, practices, relationships, behaviors, and beliefs are all up for sale and broadly shared without our awareness. Are we ourselves in fact being sold?
The technologies fueling these capabilities have received billions of dollars; consumers don’t have a chance in the face of voracious hunger to identify, know, and manipulate them. We hope that this research shines a much needed light on the forces enabling the worldwide web of human surveillance so that they may be held to accountability for their troves of data on nearly all internet users.
PS. Also check out our latest podcast with guest Zach Edwards where we discuss this worldwide web of human surveillance live.
Identity Resolution and Customer Data Platform Companies
Identity Resolution and Customer Data Platforms found in 2022 EdTech Benchmark Network Traffic