the company Venntel. Under both of these circumstances, a warrant is not required to acquire this data, due to the fact that it is "open source" or "commercially obtained". Use of the data also has implications in background checks (used in rent/housing and job applications). In 2012, Spokeo, a people search website, settled with the US Federal Trade Commission for $800,000 over violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In 2017, Cambridge Analytica claimed that it has psychological profiles of 220 million United States citizens, based on 5,000 separate data sets, with another source reporting 230 million. A scandal emerged after it was found that after 270,000 Facebook users consented to sharing their data, data was scraped from about 50 million profiles on the social media platform. This was seen as breach of trust by Facebook. In 2018, American companies spent $19 billion acquiring and analyzing consumer data, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. In 2021, The Pillar outed a Catholic priest by purchasing data from a data broker including data usage from Grindr. Privacy issues and regulation Information privacy laws are not as strict in the United States as in the European Union, where data brokers work hard to get around the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulations, brought into operation in 2018. Under GDPR, data can only be collected for re-use on one of six legal bases. The rather vague term "legitimate interest" is often abused or misinterpreted. Explicit consent from users is required for information storage. In addition, data processing related with political opinion and religious belief is prohibited unless the consent of data subject is granted. In the US, individuals generally cannot find out what data a broker holds on them, how a broker got it, or how it is used. There is no federal law that permits or enables consumers to see, make corrections to, or opt out of data compiled by brokers. Files on individuals are generally sold in lists; examples cited in testimony to the U.S. Congress include lists of rape victims, seniors with dementia, financially vulnerable people, people with HIV, police officers (by home address), alcoholics, and sufferers of erectile dysfunction. Calls for regulation in the US A 2007 University of California study, after requesting and analyzing information-sharing practices at 86 companies, found many operating under an opt-out model that it described as inconsistent with consumer expectations, and recommended that the California