Most people have never heard of data brokers — yet these companies hold and sell detailed personal profiles on hundreds of millions of people worldwide, including you. Understanding what data brokers are and how they operate is the first step to protecting your privacy.
A data broker is a company that collects personal information about individuals from a wide variety of sources and sells that information to third parties. Data brokers operate legally and their business model is built entirely on buying, packaging and selling your personal data.
Unlike social media companies that collect your data as a byproduct of providing a service, data brokers have no direct relationship with you at all. You have never agreed to share your data with them — they simply collect it from public sources without your knowledge.
Data brokers use a variety of methods to collect personal information:
Data brokers sell to a wide range of customers:
• Marketers and advertisers who want to target specific demographics
- Employers conducting background checks
- Landlords verifying potential tenants
- Insurance companies assessing risk
- Private investigators
- Journalists researching stories
- And unfortunately — fraudsters, scammers and cold callers
A typical data broker profile may include your full name and any aliases, current and previous addresses going back many years, phone numbers including mobile and landline, email addresses, date of birth, family members names and relationships, estimated income and financial information, property ownership details, vehicle information, social media profiles and interests, purchasing behaviour and brand preferences.
In the UK data brokers must comply with UK GDPR. They are legally required to have a lawful basis for processing your data — typically legitimate interests or legal obligation — and must comply with erasure requests within 30 days.
However many data brokers are based in the US and are not directly subject to UK GDPR enforcement, making removal more challenging though still possible.
Under UK GDPR Article 17 you have the Right to Erasure. You can send a formal request to any data broker asking them to delete your information. They must comply within 30 days or face action from the ICO.
The challenge is that there are over 500 data broker websites and each has its own removal process. Doing this manually takes 40-60 hours per year. Silent Erase automates the entire process — sending removal requests to 500+ sites and monitoring continuously for new listings.
Run a free scan and see exactly what personal information is publicly available about you right now
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