Consumer Confidential: A shadowy industry thrives off your data. Getting it back isn't easy

It shouldn't surprise anyone that businesses use "secret" scores to grade consumers on a variety of factors, including creditworthiness and likelihood of declaring bankruptcy.

It's been known for years that such scores exist. The New York Times highlighted the practice Monday with a look at one person's score.

But the more insidious part of the equation is the largely unregulated industry of data brokers that make billions of dollars annually buying and selling people's personal information - your information, not to put too fine a point on it.

Without these companies, there'd be no secret scores. They are the