> DMV officials say the vast majority of the revenue comes from insurance companies and businesses who buy information about their employees’ driving histories.

> DMV officials say the vast majority of the revenue comes from insurance companies and businesses who buy information about their employees’ driving histories. > However, the department has also allowed law firms, private investigators and out-of-state corporations to buy or access personal information about Vermont drivers, including where they live, the cars they drive, their driving records and their criminal histories. None of that strikes me as improper, with the exception of maybe out-of-state corporations, and in that case, it would depend on what the corporation was and what they intended to use the data for. Whether the data remains in possession of the corp after its original intended use (and for how long) and whether it is kept only for the original stated use or made available to other portions of the corp for other purposes would play into whether I considered that in improper or not. IOW, the case of selling data to corporations is gonna be a case-by-case "it depends". As for insurance companies and private investigators, I think it is right and proper that such entities can look up things like address, criminal history, or vehicles owned. While it seems that every entity gathering up any and all possible data about people will claim that all of the data gathered serves a legitimate business need, in the case of entities like insurance companies or investigators, I think that claim is more likely to be true than not.