Google and Facebook, followed by other large platforms such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alibaba have unprecedented access to data about the lives of billions of people. Although they have different business models and therefore play different roles in the personal data industry, they have the power to widely dictate the basic parameters of the overall digital markets. The large platforms mostly restrict how other firms can directly obtain their data; in this way, they force them to utilize the platform’s data on users within their own ecosystems and gather additional data from beyond the platforms’ reach.

Although the large multinationals in different sectors that have frequent interactions with hundreds of millions of consumers are in a somewhat similar position, they not only acquire consumer data collected by others, but often also provide data. While parts of the financial services and telecoms sectors, as well as crucial societal areas such as healthcare, education, and employment, are subject to stronger privacy regulation in most jurisdictions, a wide range of companies has started to utilize or contribute data to today’s networks of commercial surveillance.

Retailers and other companies that sell products and services to consumers mostly also sell data about their customers’ purchases. Media conglomerates and digital publishers sell data about their audiences, which is then utilized by companies in most other sectors. Telecom and broadband providers have started following their customers through the web. Large companies in retail, media and telecom have acquired or are acquiring data, tracking, and advertising technology firms. With Comcast acquiring NBC Universal, and AT&T most likely acquiring Time Warner, the large telecoms in the US are also becoming giant publishers, creating powerful portfolios of content, data, and targeting capabilities. With its acquisition of AOL and Yahoo, Verizon also became a “platform”.

Financial institutions have long used data on consumers for risk management, such as credit scoring and fraud detection, as well as for marketing, customer acquisition, and retention. They supplement their own data with external data from credit reporting agencies, data brokers and marketing data companies. PayPal, the biggest name in online payments, shares personal information with more than 600 third parties including other payment providers, credit reporting agencies, identity verification and fraud detection companies, as well as with the most advanced players within the digital tracking ecosystems. While credit card networks and banks have shared financial data on their customers with risk data providers for decades, they have now started selling transactional data for marketing purposes.

A myriad of smaller and larger firms providing websites, apps, games, and other applications are closely connected to the marketing data ecosystem. They use services that allow them to easily transmit data about their users to hundreds of third-party services. Many of them sell their users’ behavioral data streams as a core part of their business model. Even more worryingly, companies that provide new kinds of devices such as fitness trackers also seamlessly embed services that transfer user data to third parties.

The pervasive real-time surveillance machine that has been developed for online advertising is rapidly expanding into other fields including politics, pricing, credit scoring, and risk management. Insurers all over the world have started to offer their customers programs involving real-time tracking of behaviors such as car driving, health activities, grocery purchases, or visits to the fitness studio. New players in insurance analytics and financial technology predict individual health risks based on consumer data, as well as the creditworthiness of individuals based on behavioral data on phone calls or web searches.

Consumer data brokers, customer management companies, and advertising agencies such as Acxiom, Epsilon, Merkle or Wunderman/WPP play a major role in combining and connecting data between platforms, multinationals, and the advertising technology world. Credit reporting agencies like Experian that provide many services in very sensitive fields such as credit reporting, identity verification and fraud detection also play a major role in today’s pervasive marketing data ecosystem.

Particular large companies that provide data, analytics, and software services have been named as “platforms” as well. Oracle, a large database and business software provider, has become a consumer data broker in recent years. Salesforce, the market leader in customer relationship management that is managing the customer databases of millions of clients, yet having many customers each, has acquired Krux, a major data company connecting and combining data all over the digital world. The software company Adobe also plays an important role in profiling and advertising technology.

In addition, most major companies in business software, analytics and consulting, such as IBM, Informatica, SAS, FICO, Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, and McKinsey, or even intelligence and defense firms such as Palantir, also play a significant role in the management and analysis of personal data, from customer relationship management to identity management to marketing to risk analytics for insurers, banks, and governments.