Datarade

History

2024: Funding from the German government

At the end of July 2024, it became known that the German government is investing in the Datarade platform, which is used to trade personal data of Internet users. The site has been at the center of privacy-related scandals three times in the space of months.

In 2019, the German venture capital investment company High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) invested €1 million in Datarade. The total cost of HTGF is about €1.4 billion - these funds are distributed between four structures. According to the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection (BMWK), the HTGF III fund, which participates in the Datarade project, accounts for €320 million. Moreover, of this amount, €170 million came from BMWK.

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According to the netzpolitik.org resource, the Datarade site plays an important role in global to trade information. For example, through this platform, a certain American data broker distributed 3.6 billion records indicating the geolocation of users. Based on this information, it was possible to form detailed profiles of the movement of citizens, including people from the military sphere, security agencies and secret services. In addition, similar arrays of personal data to the Datarade site came from Netherlands and from. Switzerland

These cases, as stated in the publication of the netzpolitik.org, confirm that the German Datarade service disseminates information that not only violates the privacy of millions of people around the world, but can also jeopardize national security in a number of countries. At the same time, Datarade itself emphasizes that the platform does not violate the requirements of the law. It is said that the service removed controversial content provided by an American data broker.^[1]

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