What Is a Data Broker and How Do They Get Your Data?

Google your name. If a site you've never heard of comes back with your home address, phone number, and a list of relatives, you've just met a data broker.

Data brokers are companies that collect your personal information, build a profile on you, and sell it to advertisers, employers, insurers, and anyone else willing to pay. Most people have no idea it's happening.

This article explains what data brokers are, how they get your information, and what they do with it. 

What is a data broker?

A data broker is a company that collects and sells personally identifiable information about people. It gathers your personal information from multiple sources — public records, websites, apps, and more — then analyzes it to build a detailed profile about you.

That profile can include where you live, who you're related to, your political affiliations, estimated income, and purchase habits. There are an estimated 4,000+ data brokers operating in the U.S. alone,^[1] and most people have never heard of the companies profiting from their data.

That profile gets sold to advertisers, employers, insurers, government agencies, and anyone else willing to pay.

Examples of data brokers

People-search sites are the most recognizable type of data brokers. WhitePages, Spokeo, BeenVerified, Intelius, and Radaris let anyone look up your address, phone number, age, and relatives with a basic search and no account required.

Enterprise data brokers operate at a much larger scale and mostly sell to businesses. Companies like Acxiom, LexisNexis, Experian, and Oracle Data Cloud build detailed consumer profiles used for targeted advertising, credit decisions, and background checks. They're not household names, but they likely hold more data on you than the people-search sites do.

Want to see which sites have your information and how to remove it? Our data broker removal guide covers the opt-out process for the most common ones.

How do data brokers get your information?

Public records

Government sources are often public records. These sources can include voter registration, property records, court filings, and marriage licenses. Public records are visible to prevent fraud and ensure government transparency. There's little you can do to hide public records.

Browsing and purchase history

Data brokers use cookies, pixels, and trackers to record your browsing history. They use this information to map your interests, habits, and demographics.

They also collect data from retailers. The stores you shop at know what you bought, how you paid, whether you're in a loyalty program, and whether you've joined their newsletter. Many share that data directly with brokers.

Social media and apps

It's not just websites that you have to worry about. Apps also collect your personal information. Then they sell or share it with data brokers. Apps often get away with this because their terms of service put this in the fine print.

Social media isn't a safe option either. A good example is Facebook and the data it collects. Data brokers can see your public posts, what you like, and who you are following. This information also helps build a profile of your interests.

Third-party data sharing

Retail stores and apps aren't the only companies selling customer data to brokers. Any time you sign up for a newsletter with an email address or use your Facebook account to join a new platform, it's possible that they are selling that information to data brokers.

What do data brokers do with your information?

Once a data broker has your information, they sell or license it to companies that want to target you with ads, lenders assessing your credit risk, insurers setting your rates, and employers running background checks. What they sell depends on what type of broker they are.

Not all data brokers are the same. There are four types, and each has a specialization.

• People search brokers: Sites like BeenVerified, Spokeo, and Intelius build profiles that contain your age, gender, ethnicity, contact info, address history, and relatives.
• Marketing and advertising brokers: Companies looking to create personalized marketing and ad campaigns can purchase profiles of their intended audience.
• Financial risk brokers: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion are major credit bureaus. Your profile with them will include your income, credit history, debts, and assets.
• Health data brokers: Your medical history, fitness app data, and prescription purchase history are analyzed by these brokers. They sell this information to insurers and pharmaceutical advertisers.

What personal information do data brokers collect?

Data brokers collect any available personal information about you. Here's a list of personal information data brokers often collect from your digital footprint:

• Your name and contact information
• Current and past addresses
• Demographic information, such as marital status and occupation
• Search history
• Social media activity
• Ads you clicked on
• Online purchases
• Subscribed newsletters
• Location data
• Shopping behavior
• Brand preferences
• Subscriptions
• Relatives or members of your household
• Political and/or religious affiliations
• Hobbies and interests

If this makes you uncomfortable, you're not the only one. According to our digital footprints survey, 60% of Americans have something online they don't want others to find. Public data brokers can give anyone access to your personal infomation:

According to our research, personal details such as date of birth and ethnicity are the most common items U.S. adults want scrubbed from the internet, followed by contact information.

Privacy isn't guaranteed on the internet, and data brokers make it much harder to keep your data private.

Why data brokers are a growing problem

Data brokers aren't doing anything illegal. There's no federal law that prohibits them from collecting, building profiles, or selling your personal information. For over a decade, the FTC has called on Congress to require greater transparency from data brokers, and Congress hasn't acted.

A handful of states have stepped in. California, Vermont, and Texas have passed laws requiring data brokers to register, maintain data security standards, and honor opt-out requests. But most Americans have no state-level protection at all, and even where laws exist, enforcement is limited.

The gap in federal oversight has real consequences. U.S. intelligence agencies currently exploit a legal loophole that allows them to purchase your location data and browsing history directly from data brokers without a warrant, court order, or your consent. It's the same data advertisers buy, repurposed for government surveillance.

Meanwhile, the data broker industry continues to grow. New brokers enter the market constantly, data gets bought and resold across companies, and your profile can be refreshed and recirculated even after you've opted out.

What are the risks of data brokers?

The Do Not Call Registry exists for a reason, but it's not working. Do Not Call complaints topped 2.6 million in 2025, a 25% jump from the year before, and the FTC has identified data brokers selling consumer phone numbers as a primary driver.

Spam is the most visible symptom, but the risks run deeper.

• Identity theft: Data broker breaches have been linked to nearly $21 billion in identity theft losses.^[2] When your Social Security number, date of birth, and address exist in one place, they're prime material for identity theft.
• Targeted scams: Detailed personal profiles make it easy to craft convincing, personalized attacks. If a scammer has your phone number, name, and employer, a phishing email or call is much harder to spot.
• Doxxing: Anyone willing to pay can pull your home address, relatives, and daily patterns from a people-search site and use it to dox you.
• Price discrimination: Retailers and insurers use your purchase history, location, and income to set personalized prices that are often higher if they think you'll pay.
• Stalking: People-search sites give anyone your current address, daily patterns, and workplace for a few dollars. This has been used by stalkers to locate victims who deliberately moved to avoid them.
• Domestic abuse: Survivors who relocate to escape an abuser can be re-exposed through data broker profiles that automatically update with new addresses pulled from public records and credit activity.
• Targeting of activists and journalists: Data brokers have been used to identify, locate, and monitor people based on political affiliation, protest attendance, or religious identity.

How do I find out if data brokers have my information?

The easiest starting point is a quick Google search. Type your name and city and see what comes up. If a site you've never heard of is showing your address, phone number, or relatives, that's a people-search site, and you're already in multiple databases.

The problem is that Google only shows you what's publicly indexed. Most data broker profiles aren't. There are thousands of brokers operating databases that you can't access with a search engine.

That's where a free data exposure scan comes in. It searches data broker databases directly and shows you where your information appears, not just what's on the surface. Enter your name, location, and email address, and you'll get a list of every source with your profile on file.

Once you see what's out there, you have two options: opt out manually from each site or use a removal service to do it for you. We cover both in our guide to removing your data from data brokers.

Bottom line

Data brokers use multiple sources to collect your personal information. Once they have a detailed profile, they sell or share it with third parties. Often without your permission.

But you can take action. You can start the data broker removal process and get your information removed from their databases.

It does take some time, which is why using an automated data removal service can often speed up the process and ensure that your information doesn't get reuploaded. We recommend Incogni, Aura, and DeleteMe as top data removal experts.

Learn more about how we test and rate data removal services.

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