Data brokers collect personal information through five main methods: harvesting public government records, online tracking and digital activity, surveys and loyalty programs, purchases from other companies, and algorithmic inference. Understanding how data brokers get your information is the first step toward protecting yourself.
1. Public Records
Government databases provide data brokers with a vast supply of personal information. Property records reveal home purchases, values, and ownership history. Court records show lawsuits, divorces, bankruptcies, and criminal cases. Voter registration files contain names, addresses, party affiliations, and voting history. Professional licenses, business registrations, birth certificates, and death certificates are all publicly accessible.
These records exist for government transparency, and their collection by data brokers is largely legal under current U.S. law. Data brokers aggregate millions of them, cross-reference the data, and build profiles that reveal far more than any single record would. B2B brokers like LexisNexis specialize in court and property records, while consumer-facing people search sites make the same information freely searchable by anyone.
2. Online Tracking and Digital Activity
Every website you visit potentially feeds data brokers. Website cookies and tracking pixels follow your browsing. Social media profiles expose your interests, connections, and activity. Online purchases create purchase history records. Mobile apps collect location data and usage patterns.
Third-party tracking scripts embedded on websites collect this information and sell it to data brokers. Even if you’ve never interacted with a data broker directly, they’ve purchased data from websites you’ve visited.
3. Surveys, Loyalty Programs, and Contests
Those “free” loyalty cards and online surveys are data collection mechanisms. Retail loyalty programs track every purchase. Warranty registrations capture product ownership. The fine print typically permits data sharing with “partners”: code for data brokers.
4. Purchases from Other Companies
Data brokers buy information from retailers, financial institutions, magazine services, charitable organizations, and other data brokers. This creates a circular economy where your information continuously changes hands. A single purchase generates a data trail that can pass through dozens of companies before landing in a broker’s database.
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5. Algorithmic Inference and Modeling
Data brokers use algorithms to infer characteristics they don’t directly observe: income from home value, health conditions from purchase history, political leanings from donation patterns. These inferences may be wrong, but they’re sold as fact. A broker might flag you as a diabetes risk based on pharmacy loyalty card purchases and supplement orders, then sell that inference to an insurer who adjusts your premium, even if the inference is incorrect. The FTC’s landmark 2014 study on data brokers — still the most comprehensive federal investigation of the industry — found that one broker maintained 3,000 data segments for nearly every U.S. consumer, many based on inferred rather than observed data. The practice has only grown since.
How Do Data Brokers Get Your Information, and How Many Have It?
According to Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, more than 750 data brokers are registered in the United States alone. Each one uses some combination of the five methods above. The data broker industry exists because this information is enormously profitable, generating hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Your information is already out there. [Start your free RemoveMe scan →]
→ What Information Do Data Brokers Collect? The Full List
→ Why Are Data Brokers Dangerous? 7 Risks
→ What Are Data Brokers? The Complete Guide
FAQ
Can data brokers get my information if I don’t use social media? Yes. Data brokers collect from public records, loyalty programs, purchase histories, and other companies; social media is only one of five major sources. Even people with no online presence have data broker profiles built from property records, voter files, and commercial transactions.
Is it legal for data brokers to collect my data without permission? In most cases, yes. Data brokers primarily collect from legally accessible sources like public records and consented data-sharing arrangements. Learn more about data broker legality →
