How To Opt Out Of Database Sharing

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For years banks and other financial outfits have made bundles of money selling the vital statistics they've collected from you--data known legally as "nonpublic personal information"--to direct-marketers and other sales organizations. That haul includes your name, address, Social Security number and financial history--basically all the information about you that can't be gleaned from public sources.

Most people had no idea such sales were taking place, but the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley law requires banks, securities firms, insurers and the like to allow you to "opt out," or restrict the practice of sharing these data with unaffiliated companies. By July 1, 2001, and annually thereafter, financial institutions must send you notices explaining how they handle this info. That's why you may be getting some strange-looking correspondence from your bank. The notices tend to be shuffled among other solicitations in monthly statements. The new law won't stop data sharing from happening--it's not designed to--but it may halt some of the more indiscriminate sales that generate millions of dollars a year for the industry. That's contingent on people opting out, and according to a recent study by the American Bankers Association, only 36% of customers had even read their notices.

Even before President Clinton signed the new law in November 1999, privacy advocates and watchdog groups sounded the alarm, saying that for the most part, companies would continue to treat their customers' financial information as if it were corporate property. And as the notices--a billion of them--reached mailboxes this year, the groups turned their ire to companies' skill at obfuscating the matter. "The notices are deceptive, I think intentionally so," says Ed Mierzwinski of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "The consumer's right is buried after pages of gibberish."

Ah, yes, the fine print. Once you wade through it, you can just say no.

--By Eric Roston