Expert Award: Focum deals in data without taking responsibility
The Netherlands’ largest data broker in credit profiles, Focum, was nominated for their profiling practices. Parties like Focum advise organizations about the credit rating of their customers. In practice, those credit profiles turn out to have great consequences, because the advice it contains is practically always adopted by their customers. Meanwhile, it is unclear for citizens which data is used to create these profiles and how the advice based on these profiles came about.
The consequences for citizens can be far-reaching. These profiles are used to decide whether you are admitted to an insurance programme and the height of the insurance premium you have to pay, for example. To use Dennis Broeders’, professor at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, words: “as these profiles are used more often in daily life by banks, employers, insurance companies, and the government, they influence citizens’ chances in life.”
Focum benefits from the position they occupy and must be aware of the far-reaching consequences for society resulting from the credit profiles and advice they provide to their customers. However, they do not take the responsibility that comes along with their position. Therefore, Focum is the winner of the expert award.
The other two candidates were the Dutch tax authorities and Translink. The Dutch tax authorities were nominated for structurally violating the privacy rules by their Data & Analytics-department. Translink was nominated because it transferred sensitive personal data way too easily to DUO and other organizations in their fight against fraud.