“It came from teleco companies” is not due diligence enough for me, and it shouldn’t be for you. That answer isn’t an answer and the lack of accountability is how the companies continue to violate our right to privacy and flourish.
I never claimed this. I replied to the question about how a telecom provider would have PII. My mobile provider knows my legal name and other details. They obviously know which tower is closest to my phone at all times or my phone would not work. That it is terrible of them to sell this data was not in question.
Here's a sampling of others:
Mastercard sells information on your purchases.[^1] (Based on the info Oracle had on me, I suspect they might be one of the sources for Oracle Advertising.[^2])
Equifax, who gets information from your bank, your car insurance company, your cable company, and loads of other places, makes a nice profit off selling your info.[^3][^4]
ISPs know who you are, can infer a lot about you from unencrypted DNS queries and HTTPS SNI snooping, and they're happy to sell information about you.[^5]
Then there are several tiers of companies that buy information from various other companies, aggregate it, and then sell that off. A veritable snowball rolling down a hill of privacy violation.
[1]: https://www.wired.com/2012/10/mastercard-data-mining-holiday...
[2]: https://datacloudoptout.oracle.com/request-your-data/verify-...
[3]: https://www.inc.com/associated-press/equifax-data-money.html
[4]: https://www.equifax.com/about-equifax/why-equifax/differenti...
[5]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/93b9nv/internet-service-prov...
It’s really infuriating to me that people say Google or Facebook are “selling their data” (they’re not, they hoard data and sell targeted ads) when Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T literally sell your live, personally identifiable, non-aggregated, location data to third parties, hiding behind their subscriber agreement legalese.
Just google it, more examples are easy to find.