A data broker is a company that collects, aggregates, and sells detailed personal profiles -- your name, address, phone number, email, age, marital status, household members, education, income, political leanings, even property records -- often without you ever knowing the company exists or agreeing to any of it.
Most of this happens with essentially no oversight. Brokers build profiles and run algorithms that quietly score and sort people, with no visibility into how a score was reached and no real way to challenge it. Because the underlying data is often wrong, those same profiles have wrongly affected people's credit, housing, and job applications. Brokers have also sold home addresses that enabled stalking and domestic-violence harassment, and put law enforcement officers, judges, and other public officials at real personal risk when their home and family information became purchasable. The harm isn't evenly spread either -- already-marginalized groups tend to be hit hardest by biased or inaccurate data used this way.
Background on these harms via the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a nonprofit that has tracked and researched data-broker practices for years.
Most brokers do offer an opt-out, even if they don't advertise it. Below is a step-by-step removal guide for every broker we track -- filter by category, or jump straight to a company by name using the index.
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