Consumer Surveillance and Financial Fraud
In today’s digital economy, firms continuously collect, store, share, and sell personal data, exposing customers to risks of financial fraud. Leveraging Apple’s App Tracking Transparency policy as a natural experiment, we show that restricting data tracking and sharing significantly reduces consumer fraud complaints, particularly those involv-ing personal information misuse. Effects are stronger in areas dominated by firms with risky data practices and coincide with a decline in dark web discussions and higher prices for sensitive data. By tracing effects along the fraud supply chain, our find-ings suggest that data regulations can benefit consumers by constraining the flow of exploitable information.
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