Experian: TRW's Data Unit, Mosaic Profiles and Brazil's 220 Million Leak

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Experian is an Irish multinational credit bureau and data broker based in Dublin and listed in the FTSE 100, with almost $8.5 billion in fiscal 2026 revenue and nearly 22,000 employees. It traces to Credit Data Corporation, bought in 1968 by aerospace and automotive firm TRW. In November 1996 TRW sold the unit to Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners, who sold it a month later to Great Universal Stores, a British retailer whose customers bought on installment credit. GUS merged it with its CCN business and spun Experian off on the London Stock Exchange in October 2006. Its Mosaic tool sorts the UK population into 15 groups and 89 types such as Golden Empty Nesters.

In 2005 Experian settled FTC charges that FreeCreditReport.com enrolled people in monitoring costing almost $80. In 2013 prosecutors charged Hieu Minh Ngo, who had posed as a private investigator to buy data from Experian subsidiary Court Ventures. A breach of systems serving T-Mobile, open from September 2013 to September 2015, affected up to 15 million people. A 2020 South African breach exposed 4 million people and nearly 800,000 businesses, and in 2021 data on 220 million Brazilians linked to Serasa Experian was sold on the dark web, though Experian said its systems showed no compromise. A late 2022 URL flaw exposed credit reports until early 2023.

• Labour used Mosaic first, and the Conservatives used it to target swing voters in the 2015 general election.
• The CFPB fined Experian $3 million in March 2017 over the credit scores it sold.
• In October 2025 the Dutch Data Protection Authority fined it 2.7 million euros, and it shut down in the Netherlands.
• A Nebraska customer's lawsuit over a $24.99 double charge was moved to federal court and settled before trial.
• It agreed to buy Brazilian fraud firm ClearSale for $350 million in 2024 and launched a Cash Flow Data Bureau in October 2026.