Educational

In 2016, Oracle, long known as an enterprise software company, acquired the audience tracking company AddThis as part of expanding its business into marketing technology. AddThis places buttons on web pages to enable visitors to share stories or follow accounts on social media sites such as Facebook

In 2016, PlaceIQ, which connected physical and digital activities across time, space, and mobile devices, announced a collaboration with Oracle that would make its audience data available through Data Cloud's BlueKai Marketplace. PlaceIQ uses data from 475 million location points, 100 million unique

In 2015, Oracle rolled out "Validated Demographics", a service based on combining the capabilities it acquired with BlueKai, a data management platform that gathers data from publishers, and Datalogix, a tool that compiles offline demographic data. The combination of these complementary services

In 2017, Oracle Data Cloud and Simulmedia entered into an agreement to enable purchase-based targeting on national television. In this system, advertisers are able to reach audiences that are targeted based on their in-store purchases. Simulmedia is a leader in data-optimised TV campaigns; its

As early as 2005, Experian began suggesting that its Mosaic consumer classification system, used by retail chains to tailor their stock for local populations could be used by political parties for campaigning. Based on work by Richard Webber, a visiting professor at University College London, Mosaic

In 2000, Experian entered into a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission and agreed to pay $1 million to settle charges that the company blocked and delayed incoming phone calls from consumers wishing to discuss the contents of and possible errors in their credit reports. Under the Fair

In 2018, to enhance its AI capabilities Oracle acquired DataFox, which supplies business intelligence that can be used to help businesses plan a variety of customer relationship management services. The startup has a database covering 2.8 million public and private businesses and expecting to add 1

In 2013, detailed personal information being sold by the fraudster-friendly underground service Superget.info was found to have been bought from CourtVentures, a public records aggregator bought by Experian in 2012. In late 2013, Superget.info's operator, 24-year-old Vietnamese national Ngô Minh

In October 2015, Experian announced that a breach of its computer systems exposed the Social Security numbers and other data of approximately 15 million people who applied for financing from the mobile network operator T-Mobile USA, to which Experian supplied credit assessment services. Experian

In 2017 a free online service offered by Experian was found to be allowing anyone to request the PIN needed to unlock a previously-frozen consumer credit file. Freezing the file is intended to secure such accounts against tampering and fraud. To get an unlocking number, visitors needed to provide

In 2007, Experience agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a Federal Trade Commission complaint that the company's ads for a "free credit report" failed to explain clearly enough that consumers who signed up would be enrolled in a credit-monitoring programme costing $79.95 per year. The FTC alleged that

In January 2017 two of the three largest US credit reporting bureaus, Equifax and TransUnion, were jointly fined $23 million in a settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB held that the two companies marketed some of their products as free or costing $1 when in fact consumers

In September 2017, unrelated to the massive data breach the company simultaneously announced, Equifax withdrew its mobile apps from Apple's App Store and Google Play because of security flaws that meant that data transferred between users and Equifax was not encrypted in transmission. Given the

In October 2017, the Equifax website was infected by malware that redirected visitors to a page that delivered fraudulent Adobe Flash updates that infected visitors' computers with adware. The company took down the affected pages after it was notified. Investigation showed that the malicious

On October 13, 2017, as a result of the massive data breach announced in September and the discovery that the company's website was infected with malware, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service suspended a $7.2 million contract with Equifax pending investigation. A week earlier, the IRS had announced

In March 2017, Experian agreed to pay a $3 million fine to settle a complaint brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that until 2014 the company had provided consumers with "educational" credit scores that were different from the FICO scores actually provided to credit card issues