A data-collection company that has profiles on 700 million people will soon open its vaults so that consumers can see their individual files that may contain such diverse information as who is on a diet, who owns a cat and who likes to play the lottery.

Forbes said the move by Acxiom, a data giant with more than $1 billion in sales that is
headquartered in Little Rock, Ark., is in part aimed at relieving public fears about “Big Brother and government regulation.”

A spokesman for Acxiom said the company has been weighing more transparency for years, and that there are public misperceptions about its role and activities.

Editor's Note: Startling Proof of the End of America’s Middle Class. Details in the Video

Acxiom’s consumer dossiers contain a wealth of information, Forbes reported, including an individual’s residence, the identities of other household members, financial status, racial profile, political affiliation, and health topics of concern such as diabetes or arthritis. The dossier may be so granular as to know what kind of roof shingle is on a consumer’s home.

Because of limited U.S. regulation of data collection, Acxiom is able to mine public records, warranty cards and surveys, data from magazine publishers and catalog companies, and information from retailers.

But that is not all. CEO Scott Howe said recently the company has information on nearly one billion online users and can match 90 percent of all U.S. social profiles, which include those on sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Tim Suther, Acxiom’s chief strategy and marketing officer, said the company wanted to open its files for consumers by mid-summer, but security issues have slowed the effort.

“As you can imagine, being an information company, we, like Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and anybody else, we have all kinds of nefarious people and entities that are looking to try to break in, so the last thing that we want to do is to have a circumstance where information about people is inappropriately accessed.”

Acxiom counts 47 of the Fortune 100 companies among its customers. And they are interested not in the personal files of individuals, according to Suther, but in broad swathes of consumer activity and behavior.

However, ProPublica, an investigative journalism group, reported recently that credit reporting firms, which mine some of the same consumer information sources as Acxiom, do focus on revealing more individual information to corporate customers.

Credit reporting firm Experian has a marketing division that sells lists of “names of expectant parents and families with newborns,” ProPublica said.

NBC News reported recently another credit reporting firm, Equifax, collects detailed salary and payroll information on about 38 percent of employed Americans.

Apparently, Acxiom and other data and credit reporting firms sometimes work together. For instance, a 2009 press release from Visible World, a targeted television advertising firm,announced it was partnering with Acxiom, Experian and Nielsen to integrate their data for television ads.

Suther said Acxiom does not intend to charge consumers to see their personal files.

Forbes reported that Acxiom may be motivated by an effort to avoid government regulation and oversight. The company has recently faced scrutiny from Congressional committees and the Federal Trade Commission, which want to know more about how the company and other data brokers are collecting and using information.

Editor's Note: Startling Proof of the End of America’s Middle Class. Details in the Video