The term “data brokers” describes companies that collect and sell personal data about individuals to other companies for a variety of purposes. Reports suggest many data brokers have thousands of pieces of information on most Americans [1], including demographic information like your full name, address, age, gender, income, education, and occupation, as well as other sources of information about your health, likes and dislikes, and more.
Data brokers combine many sources of data together to create profiles for each person. Sources of data include social media, credit cards, browsing history, and government records. Depending on the amount and quality of data in each record, these profiles can be worth a lot of money to advertisers and others.
There are three main types of data brokers [2]: people search sites like Spokeo, marketing brokers like Datalogix, and risk-mitigation brokers like ID Analytics. MORE ABOUT DIFFERENT TYPES
- Add info on how to get yourself removed and why you might want to do that. See https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne9b3z/how-to-get-off-data-broker-and-people-search-sites-pipl-spokeo
[1] The Data Brokers: Selling your personal information: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-data-brokers-selling-your-personal-information/
[2] What Are ‘Data Brokers,’ and Why Are They Scooping Up Information About You?: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjpx3w/what-are-data-brokers-and-how-to-stop-my-private-data-collection