If you've ever Googled your name and found your home address, phone number, and relatives listed on a site you've never heard of, you've seen data brokers in action. But how did they get that information in the first place?
Public Records
A huge portion of data broker profiles come from public records — information the government is legally required to make available. This includes:
- Property records (when you buy a home, your name and address become public)
- Voter registration records (your name, address, and party affiliation)
- Court records (civil suits, criminal records, traffic violations)
- Marriage and divorce records
- Business license filings
None of this required your consent. It was public by law, and data brokers scraped it all.
Loyalty Programs and Retail Data
Every time you use a loyalty card at a grocery store, sign up for a retailer's rewards program, or fill out a warranty card, that data gets sold. Retailers sell customer purchase data to data brokers, who combine it with your public records to build a more complete profile.
Social Media
Even "private" social media profiles leak data. Data brokers scrape publicly visible profile information, listed employers, locations, and mutual connections. If your profile is public, your data is being collected.
Contact List Uploads
This one surprises people. When someone you know uploads their contacts to a social media platform or app, your phone number and email address can be ingested even if you've never used that app yourself.
Data Breaches
After a major data breach, stolen data eventually makes its way onto dark web marketplaces where data brokers purchase it and merge it into their existing profiles. Your information from the 2021 Facebook breach or the 2019 Capital One breach may already be part of your broker profile.
What They Do With It
Data brokers sell your profile to landlords running tenant checks, employers doing background checks, marketers building ad audiences, private investigators, and anyone else willing to pay — typically $1 to $20 per lookup.
What You Can Do
You can't stop data brokers from collecting public records. But you can submit opt-out requests to each broker to have your listing removed from their searchable database. It requires persistence — data re-adds every 60–90 days — but it significantly reduces your public exposure.
Our Done-For-You Privacy Removal service handles the entire opt-out process on your behalf so you don't have to deal with it quarterly.