{"id":11253,"date":"2026-08-05T18:39:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T00:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=11253"},"modified":"2026-08-05T18:39:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T00:39:54","slug":"is-your-intent-data-being-sold-to-your-competitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=11253","title":{"rendered":"Is your intent data being sold to your competitors?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New research says software vendors are routinely collecting far more customer data than is needed and using it to build commercial products.<\/p>\n

The findings come from Clark Barron, founder of Blackout, a company that provides GTM threat intelligence through forensic analysis of marketing software. His research examines browser code, JavaScript, network traffic, and application behavior to compare what vendors say their products do with what the software actually does after it\u2019s installed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that really opened the floodgates for me was when I uncovered an actual defeat device in the source code of [a vendor],\u201d he said. \u201cThey do de-anonymization of website visitors. By defeat device, I mean actual, like Volkswagen Dieselgate, like hiding \u2014 hiding from compliance auditors \u2014 hiding from CIPA litigators, and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barron found that the code called two different servers depending on whether it detected it was being inspected. If it identified signs of automated analysis or compliance auditing, it disabled its tracking functionality. If it detected what appeared to be a normal visitor, the tracking code executed as expected.<\/p>\n

Barron says the practice is widespread.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve analyzed over 700 vendors, and it\u2019s growing by the day, and no one\u2019s clean,\u201d Barron said. \u201cThere are a few analytics platforms, not attribution, but analytics platforms that are as clean as it gets, but when you venture into the realm of actual marketing software, like ABM vendors, intent data providers, all of that, de-anonymization \u2014 absolutely not. No. No one\u2019s clean.\u201d<\/p>\n

How and why this happens<\/h2>\n

Marketing departments routinely connect software to CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, customer support platforms, analytics systems, and AI tools. Those integrations usually give vendors access to customer records, sales pipelines, service tickets, emails, and internal communications, including information Barron says is unnecessary for the services they provide.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy does an intent data provider need access to your data to provide you with a product?\u201d said Barron. \u201c[They\u2019re] taking all of your CRM data, all of your internal communications, every single byte of data that they can get on your company, laundering it through their own aggregation machines, and then just selling it back to your competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vendors are allowed to connect to all those data sources because marketers don\u2019t view the integrations as security decisions and think of vendors as partners, not adversaries.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Marketers] don\u2019t ever think, \u2018Gosh, this thing is interacting with my data. I wonder what it\u2019s doing with my data,\u2019\u201d said Chris Penn, co-founder and chief data scientist at Trust Insights.<\/p>\n

Even when marketers ask that question, most lack the technical expertise to verify the answer themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019re talking about marketers and sales professionals \u2026 it\u2019s just not their discipline, they are not technical enough to know that there are red flags even,\u201d said Barron. \u201cThere is a huge operational security failure point happening \u2026 all these vendors have access and full visibility into your internal communications that you think are private.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

AI expands the exposure<\/h2>\n

AI increases the risk by allowing connected systems to exchange data and instructions with less human oversight. Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets AI systems connect to external applications, data sources, and tools.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you install an MCP, you are connecting to somebody else\u2019s computer,\u201d said Penn. That \u201cmeans that if you don\u2019t know what instructions an MCP is giving, you could be dealing with data exfiltration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, HubSpot got into trouble for just that. That\u2019s when it came to light the company had changed its terms of service<\/a> to take enrichment data from one company and use it to enrich or supplement another company\u2019s records. Then it automatically opted in all of its customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cHubSpot, in its MCP, asked the model, \u2018Hey, what else are you working on?\u2019\u201d said Penn. \u201cAnd that was a prompt that the agents would understand and answer, passing that data back. Did the marketer consent to that? Maybe, maybe not. I\u2019m sure it\u2019s in the terms and conditions somewhere. But did we knowingly consent with informed consent?\u201d<\/p>\n

Customer backlash prompted HubSpot to reverse the change days after it became public<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The bottom line<\/h2>\n

The research raises a business question alongside a security one: What happens to customer data after it leaves your systems? Barron says vendors use that information to build commercial products, meaning companies can end up contributing data that benefits competitors as well as themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir attribution dashboards start lying to them. Their customer acquisition costs start going through the roof, and they don\u2019t know why,\u201d Barron said. \u201cThey don\u2019t understand that they\u2019re actually subsidizing their competition\u2019s customer acquisition cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barron says many marketers misunderstand both the ownership of first-party data and how their customer information feeds commercial intent products used across the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people are just now starting to realize that things like intent data \u2026 it\u2019s \u2018Soylent Green<\/a>,’\u201d Barron said. \u201c\u2018Soylent Green\u2019 is people. It\u2019s your own data just being repackaged and sold back to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post Is your intent data being sold to your competitors?<\/a> appeared first on MarTech<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New research says software vendors are routinely collecting far more customer data than is needed and using it to build commercial products. The findings come from Clark Barron, founder of Blackout, a company that provides GTM threat intelligence through forensic analysis of marketing software. His research examines browser code, JavaScript, network traffic, and application behavior … <\/p>\n

Read more “Is your intent data being sold to your competitors?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"medium":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"large":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"inspiro-featured-image":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"inspiro-loop":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"inspiro-loop@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-masonry":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-masonry@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_cinema":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_portrait":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_portrait@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_square":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/data-theft2-800x450.png",0,0,false]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}