COMMENTARY: How Washington helps Big Tech harm consumers Every time you connect a financial app to your bank account, you’re likely handing over your most sensitive information to companies you’ve never heard of. While you think you’re linking an account to move money, you’re granting access to data middlemen who profit by harvesting and selling your financial details, often without your understanding or consent. The Biden administration put forth a regulation that allowed data aggre gators to harvest your financial life. In this new era of artificial intelligence, Big Tech needs as much data as possible from you and preferably without your consent. For example, when you use popular financial apps, data dealers gain access to your banking information as you accept the endless terms and conditions. These firms operate in the background, collecting transaction histories, account balances, routing numbers and other sensitive data. Their business model is simple: access your data for free and sell it to financial technology firms and cryptocurrency startups. What should have been impossible became worse when banking institutions were prevented from limiting access under the premise of “open banking.” Instead, what has emerged is open season, with these firms hunting for every aspect of your financial digital life to sell. The lingering regulation prohibited banks from charging data aggre gators for access to the secure infrastructure they built to protect customer data. It forces banks to provide free access to the expensive, secure systems they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and maintain. The scale of this data harvesting reaches billions of times monthly, and 90 percent of these data pulls happen without any consumer request. In many cases, these companies continue accessing your accounts multiple times daily, every day, sometimes for years after you initially clicked “I agree.” One study by The Clearinghouse revealed that 78 percent of consumers didn’t know that data aggre gators regularly access their personal information even when apps are closed and deleted. Many data brokers also fail to register with state consumer protection agencies to shield their craft further.

The problems with this regulation have become so apparent that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has now asked a court to vacate its rule, concluding it “exceeds the bureau’s statutory authority and is arbitrary and capricious.” The agency recently announced it would initiate new rulemaking to revise the regulation. Banks have become the unsung heroes of consumer privacy in this fight. Financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase invest heavily in cybersecurity precisely because customers trust them to protect their most personal financial information. When data aggre gators access bank-b buil t systems to harvest customer data far beyond explicit customer needs, banks must fight back. Under new minimal pricing structures some banks have introduced, the cost to data aggre gators would be less than 10 cents monthly per customer to access financial accounts upon customer request. This isn’t about preventing innovation or blocking access to financial services. Financial technology companies and cryptocurrency providers can still access all the customer data they need to provide services. The issue is specifically with the middlemen who exploit the system to harvest data they don’t need and profit from information customers never intended to share! The current system socializes the costs of data infrastructure while privatizing the profits from data harvesting. This represents bad policy and a betrayal of consumer trust. Even the CFPB now recognizes this fundamental flaw. Your information shouldn’t be harvested by companies you’ve never heard of, sold to buyers you’ve never met, and protected by government regulation that prioritizes corporate profits over privacy. The CFPB has taken the first step by acknowledging its rule was flawed and asking a court to stay the regulation as it initiates a new rulemaking process. Any new rulemaking must put consumers back in control of their financial information and prioritize privacy over the profits of data middlemen. The solution is straightforward: Consumers should control their data, not faceless corporations operating in the digital shadows. The CFPB’s recent acknowledgment that its own rule exceeds statutory authority proves this point.

It must fully vacate the flawed rule, require clear disclosure of data access, and allow banks to charge reasonable fees to protect financial privacy.