A new U.S. Congressional report is putting a figure on something many consumers already feel. Beyond inconvenience, data breaches create lasting financial harm.
A report released by U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan, ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee, estimates that four major data broker breaches over the past decade have cost U.S. consumers more than $20BN in losses tied to identity theft, fraud, and scams.
To arrive at the estimate, the committee evaluated how many people exposed in each breach were likely to experience identity theft, scaled that number down, used federal data to determine how many victims lost money, and then multiplied those losses by a typical $200 per person.
But this likely understates the real cost to consumers, the committee acknowledged.
“Notably, consumers with data exposed in a breach may try to recover losses through a class action lawsuit against the companies that experienced the breach. These cases make clear that the total financial losses that victims of identity theft experience are likely far greater than the median of $200 lost to identity theft.”
Why Data Broker Practices Are Becoming a Front-Line CX Issue
Data brokers collect and sell personal information pulled from commercial activity, government records, and public sources, often outside of a direct customer relationship. From a customer experience perspective, that distance creates a problem. Customers don’t always know who has their data, but they do know which brands they call when something goes wrong.
When breaches involving brokers lead to fraud, customers frequently turn to banks, retailers, healthcare providers, and digital services for help, even if those organizations weren’t the source of the exposure. That shifts the operational burden to customer service teams, who are left managing long calls, heightened emotions and the long-term erosion of trust.
The committee concluded:
“[A] dditional action is needed to protect Americans from scams connected to data brokers.”
Data Broker Breaches Fuel Scams, Fraud, and Customer Distrust
According to the report, security breaches at data brokers don’t just create one-time fraud events. They supply scammers with the information needed for more convincing and persistent attacks, including account takeovers and targeted phishing that feels personal to the victim.
For CX organizations, that means fraud prevention and recovery increasingly intersect with customer experience design. Long verification steps, frozen accounts and repeated identity checks may reduce risk, but they can also frustrate customers who are already dealing with financial loss.
Consent Management Gaps Add Risk Across the Customer Journey
The Senate committee’s findings also land as scrutiny increases around how brands handle consent to collect and share customer data across channels. Consent captured at one touchpoint often fails to follow customers across systems, creating what it hidden compliance debt in omnichannel CX.
From a customer’s point of view, that fragmentation shows up as unexpected data use, unclear disclosures, or difficulty opting out, all of which compound the trust damage when a breach occurs.
The report revisits follow-up action Hassan took last August after allegations that some data brokers were obscuring opt-out mechanisms.
The report stated:
“At a minimum, opt-out options should be easy to locate and use.”
Four companies, Comscore, IQVIA Digital, Telesign, and 6sense Insights, responded and improved access to their opt-out tools. Findem did not respond to the inquiry.
What Stronger Data Oversight Means
Hassan argued that improved transparency and oversight could help slow the growth of scam losses tied to brokered data.
“As the volume of information that data brokers collect on individuals continues to grow—and as U.S. losses to scams escalate—data brokers, the Administration, and Congress can all play a key role in addressing scam risks stemming from data broker practices,” the report stated.
Even when data collection happens behind the scenes, the customer experience consequences play out in full view in the customer journey, reshaping how customers engage, complain, and decide whether to stay loyal.
