Data brokers are companies whose core business is collecting, aggregating, and selling personal information about individuals without those individuals' direct knowledge or consent. The information comes from public records like voter registrations and property deeds, commercial transactions, social media scraping, app location data, and purchases from retailers. Brokers combine these sources to build detailed profiles covering address history, family relationships, financial status, health conditions, political affiliation, and daily movements.
The industry has two main customers. The commercial market includes advertisers, employers, insurers, and landlords who use profiles to target or screen people. The government market — growing rapidly — includes law enforcement and immigration agencies that buy data to circumvent the warrant requirements that would apply to direct government collection. ICE, the FBI, and the IRS have all purchased data broker services for domestic investigations.
Federal law does not require data brokers to register, disclose their sources, or allow individuals to opt out. A few states — Vermont, California, Texas — have enacted broker registration or deletion rights. Congress has repeatedly considered a federal data broker registry without passing one.
Data brokers have built a parallel surveillance infrastructure that government agencies use to avoid the Fourth Amendment. By buying what they couldn't collect themselves without a warrant, agencies sidestep constitutional limits on government surveillance. The people most targeted are often immigrants, political activists, and anyone whose data makes them commercially valuable or government-interesting.
People think they can avoid data broker profiles by staying off social media. Brokers pull from public records, loyalty programs, property records, and phone GPS data — most of which people generate without choosing to. Opting out requires contacting dozens of individual brokers, each with their own process, and profiles are often rebuilt after deletion.
Data brokers have built a parallel surveillance infrastructure that government agencies use to avoid the Fourth Amendment. By buying what they couldn't collect themselves without a warrant, agencies sidestep constitutional limits on government surveillance. The people most targeted are often immigrants, political activists, and anyone whose data makes them commercially valuable or government-interesting.
People think they can avoid data broker profiles by staying off social media. Brokers pull from public records, loyalty programs, property records, and phone GPS data — most of which people generate without choosing to. Opting out requires contacting dozens of individual brokers, each with their own process, and profiles are often rebuilt after deletion.