Back on the Data Trail: OPC Awards CIPPIC Grant to Study Canadian Data Broker Industry

CIPPIC has been awarded a grant from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, through its Contributions Program, for a research project analyzing the activities of data brokers in Canada.

The project, titled Back on the Data Trail, examines the evolution of the Canadian data broker industry over the past decade. The project picks up CIPPIC’s prior OPC-funded work in this field: in 2006, CIPPIC published a study of Canada’s data broker industry: On the Data Trail: How detailed information about you gets into the hands of organizations with whom you have no relationship. Over a decade later, and despite radical structural changes in Canada’s data broker industry, this report continues to be the leading analysis of the industry. Indeed, the Research Group of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s 2015 discussion paper on the industry, Data Brokers: A Look at the Canadian and American Landscape (September 2014), relied heavily on CIPPIC’s now-dated 2006 report. It is past time to update this important research.

CIPPIC thanks the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada for its support of CIPPIC’s research. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada funds independent privacy research and related knowledge translation initiatives through its Contributions Program. The goal of the program is to generate new ideas, approaches and knowledge about privacy that organizations can apply to better safeguard personal information and that individual Canadians can use to make more informed decisions about protecting their privacy.