Reporter Karina Montoya explains how the unregulated market of data brokers enables criminals to target vulnerable communities.

About a month ago, a Lyft/Uber driver, who we can call Ramon, asked me if I could helped him read a letter in English from the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles. “I think it’s a scam, but I’m not sure,” Ramon told me as he retrieved the letter from the glove compartment. Originally from Bolivia, Ramon is a 60-year-old retiree who has worked as a cook for more than 25 years in D.C. and Virginia. He speaks good English, but he prefers to get help when reading documents, he told me.

The letter actually did look like a scam. At least to me, cursed with an obsessive attention to detail, it was clear that the font and letter head were not official. The content, however, sounded quite convincing, especially for someone like Ramon, who could easily be caught in a moment of insecurity. The letter gave detailed information about speeding tickets that remained unpaid. “I already paid all my speeding tickets months ago. I keep scanning the QR code on the letter to see what the tickets are about, but it doesn’t show anything. What do you think I should do?” he asked, visibly concerned.

Ramon is the perfect target for scammers: foreign-born, Latino, Brown, more than 50 years old, and with a steady stream of income. Criminals have always used scams to exploit vulnerable communities, but what is new is the ease with which just about anyone can access detailed personal information to target potential victims like Ramon with specific scams. Federal Trade Commission data shows Latino and African-American communities are disproportionally targeted by fraudsters online as well as offline. Across racial groups, Latinos are the most affected: two in five adults are targeted by scams, and one in five lose money to these tactics, according to a survey by the American Association of Retired Persons. The top fraud categories targeting Latinos are government impostors, utility scams, and grandparent scams – in which fraudsters impersonate grandchildren or other younger family members asking for money.

How can scammers get a hold of our names, postal addresses, phone numbers, and know what we may be more susceptible to believe? Thanks to a combination of invasive tracking technologies and a lack of comprehensive data privacy rights, communities of color in the U.S. suffer the most from the exploitation of their data collected on social media, websites, and just about any app they use.

 Read full article in English here.