Companies That Sell Your Personal Data in 2026

Roughly 4,000 companies buy, package, and resell personal data in the United States alone, and most of them fall into four buckets: people-search sites like Spokeo and BeenVerified, credit and identity bureaus like Experian and LexisNexis, marketing data brokers like Acxiom and Epsilon, and ad-tech intermediaries like Oracle and LiveRamp. Every one of them profits from personal information you never knowingly handed over — and every one is legally required to let you opt out.

Who Actually Buys and Sells Personal Data?

Consumer data changes hands so many times before it reaches a marketer, an insurer, or a scammer that it is nearly impossible to trace. But the ecosystem is not chaotic — it is dominated by four overlapping categories of companies. Understanding them tells you where your data comes from, who profits, and, crucially, where to opt out first.

1. People-Search and Public Records Aggregators

These are the sites most people mean when they say "data broker": consumer-facing directories that assemble profiles from public records and resell background reports to anyone willing to click through. Major names include:

• Spokeo — aggregates public records, social media, and marketing lists into per-person profiles.
• BeenVerified — background reports including addresses, phone numbers, relatives, and criminal records.
• Whitepages — legacy phone-directory turned people-search platform.
• Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate, US Search — all owned by PeopleConnect and share a single suppression pathway.
• Radaris, MyLife, Nuwber, PeopleFinder, TruePeopleSearch, FastPeopleSearch — variations on the same aggregate-and-sell model.

These sites make money from paid background reports, advertising, and licensing feeds to other brokers. They are the fastest-growing category and the biggest driver of doxxing, stalking, and targeted scams — because their entire business is making individuals findable.

2. Credit, Identity, and Risk Bureaus

Behind the consumer-facing directories sit the giants of the personal-data economy — enterprise data companies that supply lenders, insurers, landlords, employers, and law enforcement. The big ones:

• Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — the three consumer credit bureaus. Also operate identity-fraud, marketing, and analytics divisions with far broader data than credit reports alone.
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions — sells identity verification, insurance underwriting, and law-enforcement analytics products. Holds detailed dossiers on nearly every U.S. adult.
• Thomson Reuters CLEAR — investigative platform used by government, financial institutions, and corporate security.
• CoreLogic — property and mortgage data pipelines.
• Verisk (ISO) — insurance analytics and risk scoring.

These companies are subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLBA), and other sector-specific rules — but the marketing arms of the credit bureaus operate largely outside those laws.

3. Marketing and Consumer Data Brokers

Marketing brokers exist to help brands buy audience data — email lists, phone lists, demographic segments, purchase history, income estimates, and "lifestyle" scores. The heavyweight names include:

• Acxiom (a LiveRamp subsidiary) — one of the largest consumer data warehouses in the world.
• Epsilon (owned by Publicis) — a similar cross-channel marketing data platform.
• Oracle Data Cloud — a former giant of ad-targeting data, now scaled back after regulatory scrutiny but still influential.
• Neustar (part of TransUnion) — identity graph and marketing attribution.
• Dun & Bradstreet — primarily B2B, but bridges into consumer data through affiliated products.

Marketing brokers rarely deal directly with consumers, which is why most people have never heard of them. That does not make them optional — their data feeds power the spam calls, junk mail, and political mailers you receive.

4. Ad-Tech and Identity-Graph Intermediaries

Every time you load a webpage or open an app, dozens of ad-tech platforms exchange information about you in real time. The companies that stitch these signals together into a persistent "identity graph" include:

• LiveRamp — the dominant identity-resolution service, connecting emails, mobile ad IDs, and cookies across the web.
• The Trade Desk (UID2) — a post-cookie identity framework built around hashed emails.
• ID5, Zeotap, Lotame — mid-market identity graph and audience providers.

These companies operate mostly in the plumbing of advertising, but the profiles they maintain are among the most detailed pictures of your online behavior in existence.

How Brokers Actually Get Your Data

Data brokers do not usually hack your accounts. They combine data from ordinary, often legal sources into profiles that go far beyond what any single source discloses.

• Public records — voter rolls, property deeds, court dockets, marriage and divorce filings, professional licenses, business registrations.
• Data breaches and combolists — leaked email/password lists, breach dumps sold on hacker forums, and "combined" lists resold across the ecosystem.
• Loyalty programs and warranty cards — signing up for a grocery rewards account, a manufacturer warranty, or a magazine subscription frequently authorizes downstream data sharing.
• Mobile apps and SDKs — free apps often embed data-collection SDKs (Foursquare, Adjust, X-Mode, Vungle) that quietly send location, contacts, and device data to brokers.
• Financial and telecom partners — banks, credit-card networks, and mobile carriers sell anonymized (and sometimes re-identifiable) transaction and location data through partner programs.
• Purchase from other brokers — the market is layered, so a single record can pass through half a dozen brokers before it reaches the buyer.

How Much Is Your Data Actually Worth?

Individual records are cheap; the value is in the aggregate. Approximate 2026 wholesale rates from industry price sheets and public FTC filings:

• A full name plus verified email address: $0.10 to $0.30.
• A verified U.S. mobile number, TCPA-compliant: $0.20 to $1.50.
• A demographic segment (e.g., "homeowner, 45-64, HHI $100k+"): $0.05 to $0.15 per record.
• A recent-mover or new-baby list: $0.30 to $1 per record.
• A medical or financial "in-market" audience: $1 to $5 per record.

Brokers assemble those cheap building blocks into enterprise contracts worth millions. Global spending on third-party data crossed $30 billion in 2025 and continues to grow, even as regulators push back.

The Laws That Apply — and the Ones That Don't

The regulatory landscape is patchy. What applies depends on where you live and which broker holds the data.

• California (CCPA/CPRA and the Delete Act) — Broadest rights: opt out of sale, right to delete, right to know. The California Delete Act's DROP platform, rolling out in 2026, will let residents delete themselves across all registered brokers with a single request.
• Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, and a growing list of states — Consumer privacy laws with similar rights, though enforcement varies.
• Federal — FCRA, GLBA, HIPAA, COPPA, TCPA — Sectoral laws covering credit, financial, health, children's, and telemarketing data. There is still no comprehensive federal privacy law.
• EU/UK — GDPR and UK GDPR — Strong opt-in consent, right to erasure, right to object to profiling. Many U.S. brokers technically comply for EU residents only.
• Vermont and California data broker registries — Brokers must register annually and provide opt-out contact information.

How to Get Off These Companies' Lists

You have three real options. Each has trade-offs.

1. Opt out manually, broker by broker. Each of the sites above has an opt-out form or an email address. It works, but the ecosystem is large — expect 20 to 40 hours of work for the top 100 brokers, then another few hours every 60 to 90 days to catch re-listings.
2. Use a state-level central platform. California residents can use the state Delete Act's DROP platform (phased rollout through 2026). It is powerful but limited to registered brokers and Californians.
3. Use an automated data removal service. Services like PrivacyOn submit opt-outs across 100+ brokers, monitor continuously, and re-submit when your data reappears — all for around $8-10 per month. For most people the time saved pays for the service many times over.

PrivacyOn Cuts the Ecosystem Down for You

The reason personal data resurfaces is not that brokers ignore opt-outs — it is that there are too many brokers, they refresh from the same public-record firehose every month, and manually re-checking each one is unrealistic. PrivacyOn automates the whole cycle: 100+ data broker sites monitored 24/7, opt-out requests submitted on your behalf, re-listings detected and re-submitted automatically. You also get dark web monitoring for your email, phone, and SSN, plus a family plan that covers up to 5 people. Plans start at $8.33/month — less than a single Spokeo background report — and you can run a free exposure scan first to see exactly which of the companies above already have you listed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which companies actually sell my personal data?

Roughly 4,000 companies in the U.S. participate in the personal-data economy. The biggest are the people-search sites (Spokeo, BeenVerified, Whitepages, Intelius/TruthFinder), the credit and identity bureaus (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters CLEAR), the marketing data brokers (Acxiom, Epsilon, Neustar, Oracle Data Cloud), and the ad-tech identity graphs (LiveRamp, The Trade Desk, ID5). Every one of them buys and sells personal data at scale, and every one is required by U.S. state laws to let you opt out.

How do data brokers get my information without permission?

Almost all of it is technically legal. Brokers combine public records (voter rolls, property deeds, court dockets), breach and combolist data, mobile-app SDK feeds, loyalty-program signups, warranty cards, financial and telecom partner programs, and purchases from other brokers. You never sit down and hand any single one of them your whole profile — but by the time they merge all those sources, they know your address, phone, family, employer, and buying habits.

How much do data brokers sell my info for?

Individual records are cheap: about $0.10 to $0.30 for a name plus email, $0.20 to $1.50 for a verified mobile number, and up to $5 per record for high-value "in-market" health or finance audiences. The money is in aggregate contracts — global spending on third-party consumer data exceeded $30 billion in 2025, split among brokers who each hold hundreds of millions of records.

Is it legal for companies to sell my personal data in 2026?

In most cases, yes — with limits. There is no comprehensive U.S. federal privacy law. Instead, state laws (California, Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut, Texas, Oregon, and a growing list) give residents the right to opt out of sale and demand deletion. Federal laws cover specific sectors: FCRA for credit, HIPAA for health, GLBA for financial, COPPA for kids, TCPA for telemarketing. Brokers must honor state-law requests, but enforcement is patchy and violations are common.

How do I opt out of every company selling my data?

You have three options. Manual opt-out (visit each broker's opt-out page — expect 20 to 40 hours for the top 100 sites, plus quarterly rechecks). State central platforms (California's DROP under the Delete Act, rolling out through 2026, but Californians-only). Or an automated service like PrivacyOn that submits removals across 100+ brokers, monitors continuously, and re-submits when your data reappears, for around $8/month. For most people the automated route is the only realistic way to stay off the market long-term.

Will opting out actually stop the spam calls and junk mail?

Yes, over a few months. Once your name, phone, and address drop off the major broker lists, marketers stop buying you as an audience and phone scam boiler rooms can no longer refresh their dialing lists with your number. Expect a noticeable drop within 30 to 60 days and a substantial reduction within 3 to 6 months — provided you keep the removals current, since brokers re-scrape public records constantly.