Thousands of Companies May Have Your Data, But Fewer Than Half Are Complying with Privacy Laws

We’ve all done it: created an account with an online shop, entered a contest, signed up for a free trial… the list goes on. After decades, the cumulative toll of casual online life on data security can be severe. New research from Mine, a AI-powered data footprinting and privacy company, uncovered a series of startling statistics that describe how our online data footprints may be much larger than we think – and how lackluster compliance from the companies holding our data may be worsening the problem.

Mine studied 30,000 of its worldwide users, predominantly from Europe (52%) and the U.S. (19%), complementing that data with a survey of 1,700 adults ranging from 18 to 50 in the U.S. and the UK. They found that the average person has entrusted around 350 brands with their data, growing at a rate of eight new companies per month – but at the far end of that curve, the top 5% of people had their data held by a staggering average of 2,834 brands.

Worse yet? On average, over 83% of that data was held by companies that those people had only interacted with once, with just 17% attributable to services that they frequently used. Understandably, this dismayed respondents, 90% of whom were guessed that their footprints would be just half that size and 92% of whom felt uncomfortable with the number of companies that had access to their data.

Mine, which launched in January, offers an AI-powered tool that scans its users’ email inboxes to find traces of companies that might have access to the users’ data. It then offers users the option to generate automated right-to-be-forgotten requests that take advantage of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which requires such requests be complied with within a month. Again, however, it revealed troublesome numbers: just 40% of companies responded to those requests, and even fewer (37%) had completed them. Somewhat more heartening, 26% were in conversation with users and 14% reached out to Mine in an attempt to streamline their data protection services. 

“The fact so many people have used Mine to reclaim their data in our first month confirms our belief that instead of talking about data privacy we need to shift our mindsets to strive for data ownership,” said Gal Ringel, co-founder and CEO of Mine. “Any form of online experience isn’t possible without sharing our data so trying to cloak our online presence isn’t a solution, it’s only avoiding the problem.”