AI data brokers are buying old company emails, chats and files to train models, and a sale of Spirit Airlines records is on hold over staff privacy

WIRED reports that data brokers such as Handshake, Micro1 and Mercor are buying workplace records, including emails, chat messages and documents, and selling them to AI labs as training material. The brokers say personal details are stripped out first. A bankrupt Spirit Airlines put up 80,000 email accounts and 500 million internal messages for sale, and that sale is on hold after the flight attendants' union said it included their private information.

• If you run a business, decide now what happens to your emails and files if you ever close or sell it, and ask any firm that offers to take your records who gets them and how names are removed, in writing.
• If you are an employee, treat work email and chat as the company's property and keep medical or family matters in your own accounts.

Source: WIRED. This is our short summary of their reporting. The paragraphs marked "Our read" and the things to do are SeedFoundry's opinion. The summary is drafted with AI tools. The picture is our own graphic. How we source and credit