Senior Trump administration officials have canceled a plan that would prevent data brokers from selling Americans’ personal and financial information, including social security numbers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said in December 2024 that it protects federal law under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which protects American personal data collected by consumer reporting agencies, such as credit bureaus and tenant screening companies. The rule will have nothing to do with how any other company covered by federal law deals with data brokers and requires them to comply with the legal privacy rules.

The rule was withdrawn according to listing in the Federal Register. Russell Vought, acting director of the CFPB, also serves as a director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, wrote that the rule “is inconsistent with the bureau’s current Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Wired first reported the rule changes on Wednesday.

Data brokers are part of billion-dollar companies that profit from collecting and selling access to a large number of Americans’ personal and financial information. This personal data is then often sold to other companies as well as law enforcement and intelligence agencies, often without the express permission of the individual.

Collecting large amounts of data also carries inherent risks. Over the past year, at least two data brokers have been hacked, overflowing millions of social security numbers online and stripping away a large amount of user location data that tracks the whereabouts of millions of people.

In 2024 alone, the Federal Trade Commission has banned several data brokers from collecting and sharing data without their permission and alleged illegally tracking personnel.

Privacy advocates have long called on the government to use the Fair Credit Reporting Act to control data brokers.

The decision to cancel the rules came a few days after the Financial Technology Association, a group representing banks and fintech companies, wrote to Vorge, who served as White House budget director. Hall Group asked the government to withdraw the CFPB rules and claimed that this would be "harmful to financial institutions' efforts to explore and prevent fraud".

CFPB did not return a request for comment.