TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users
I work in fraud prevention with vendors such as this. Let me be the devil's advocate here: trust and risk scores such as these are often very useful for identifying account takeovers and stolen identities in the financial and telecom worlds. We often see folks on HN complaining about how banks don't protect them from fraud losses - companies like this are how there is any hope left for some modicum of consumer protection.<p>You may ask: Then why do banks not protect me from losses better? 
I say: They're already doing something (invisible as it may be). They can definitely do a better job. But without companies such as Telesign, fraud losses would far, far worse.<p>You may ask:  What if my data gathered is used for nefarious purposes? 
I say: In my experience, data such as this is not allowed to be used for marketing purposes but strictly for consumer protection. I'm not specifically speaking about TeleSign but similar vendors. The worst that should happen is that you get a transaction declined, or get denied for a credit card etc. But no marketing or any other manipulative practice is allowed, in theory.<p>Happy to answer any questions you may have :)