Reports from major retailers and banks over a hired marketing agency’s database being hacked has people wondering about who they do business with.

Unfortunately restricting this information from being shared by your credit card company is not something you can do. You are basically required to cancel your bank account or credit cards to to keep your information from being used for anything they want to use it for. You just have no say in restricting it only for the management of your account. This is because information is money today and banks and retailers make a lot of money selling and sharing your data.

It seems that a large marketing company Epsilon which has access to over 2500 retailers and banks had their database taken. Now this may not be the worst thing in the world if it was limited to coupon offers from soup makers but the companies that work with Epsilon include both retail and banks.

Names like J.P. Morgan Chase, Capital One, US Bank, TiVo, Best Buy, McKinsey, Marriott, Kroger, Walgreen’s, Disney, the US College Board, and roughly 2,500 others businesses that use your information or sell it are at risk.

Best Buy got out in front on this and said do not respond to emails requesting your login credentials but the word is still out on what information was actually harvested.

Previously TJMax and other retailers had their databases harvested from what seemed to be an inside job this exposed millions of credit card customers.

European countries have laws against the use of personal data and merging of databases but at this time the USA does not.

And here is another clue if you attended college or even a public grade school there is an almost 100% chance that your personal data has been shared or sold from your student record. Yes thats right no one signs a paper giving schools the right to give out your personal data to Alumni groups which are often headed by realtors, insurance agents and other weasels that want to market to you. …

Even if you restrict your personal files from your educational institutions most will not honor your request.. I personally requested 3 schools to restrict my data and I continue to receive alumni offers, vacation and credit card offers and other business requests that blatantly state which school it is coming from.

So, if a Government Database is being sold for kickbacks from your kindergarten signup sheet… we are all basically screwed…