Guides

What Is a Data Broker (and Why Is Your Information for Sale)?

2026-06-07 · byscento Privacy Team

A data broker is a company that collects personal information about people - usually without interacting with them directly - and sells, licenses, or shares it with others. If you've never signed up for one but your details still show up on it, that's the point: data brokers build profiles from sources you never handed your data to.

What information do they have?

A typical data-broker or people-search profile can include:

• Full name, age, and date of birth
• Current and past home addresses
• Phone numbers and email addresses
• Relatives, associates, and roommates
• Estimated income, property records, and more

People-search sites package this into a public profile anyone can look up. Marketing data brokers sell it in bulk to advertisers, recruiters, and other businesses.

Where do they get it?

Data brokers assemble profiles from:

• Public records - voter files, property and court records, business filings.
• Commercial sources - loyalty programs, warranty cards, app data, online purchases.
• Other data brokers - they buy and resell each other's data, which is why the same details spread across dozens of sites.

Is this legal?

Largely, yes - but it's regulated. In California, data brokers must register annually with the California Privacy Protection Agency and honor opt-out and deletion requests. Laws like the CCPA and CPRA (California), and similar laws in other states, give you the right to tell brokers to delete your data and stop selling it. Learn more about your CCPA/CPRA deletion rights.

Why it matters

Beyond feeling invasive, broker data fuels real harms: spam and robocalls, phishing, identity theft, and - for people dealing with harassment or stalking - genuine safety risks. Removing your information shrinks your exposure on all of these.

How to get your data removed

You can opt out of brokers one at a time using their removal pages - we publish opt-out guides for 600+ brokers. Because brokers re-list data over time, the practical challenge is doing it repeatedly. byscento automates the removal and keeps monitoring so your profile stays gone. Start with a free scan to see who's listing you.