Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has written the FederalTrade Commission asking the agency to look the practice of leadgenerations at online payday loan sites.

Markey's Dec. 4 letter to FTC Chairwoman Helen Ramirez cited areport carried on NPR which related what happened when a reportergave some of her information to a site and said she was looking fora short-term, small loan.

Within minutes, Markey wrote, the reporter was “bombarded” withoffers from online payday lenders who had been given herinformation from the first site, a lead generation site.

“These business practices raise a number of concernsabout what these lead generator websites do with consumers'personal information, whether they store and secure it and whetherthese websites sell this personal information without consumers'knowledge of consent,” the Massachusetts senator told the FTC.

The information collected include consumer's names andaddresses, Markey wrote, but also Social Security numbers, banking account and routing numbers. The sites claim theinformation will be used to approve the loan, Markey alleged, butare not clear that the information will be shared with a largenumber of other organizations or lenders the consumers do notknow.

Markey compared this practice with a similar letter that hewrote in 2012 about practices he alleged were being used by databrokers to gather consumers' personal information and then sellthat information to other firms.

“I believe an investigation of this (payday lender) practicewould fall within the FTC's mandate as stipulated in Section 5 ofthe Federal Trade Commission Act with respect to protectingAmericans from 'unfair and deceptive acts or practices,'” Market'sletter said.