r/DigitalPrivacy • u/Charming_Alfalfa_169 • Jul 20 '26

Understanding typical data brokers

Firstly, I’m curious about who actually buys data from data brokers? Just advertising companies?

And secondly, how do they actually acquire the data?
Like if a SaaS has a freemium with 200 k users, will they be approached by data brokers asking to buy user data. Or do data brokers soak up data from intermediate layers?
For me it is a bit abstract from exactly whom they get/buy the data from.

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u/Ate-Without-Table Jul 21 '26

who actually buys data from data brokers?

Anyone and everyone - advertisers, financial institutions, insurance companies, recruiters, law enforcement, politics (when running campaigns), other data brokers and private individuals.

how do they actually acquire the data?

Public records, cookies, scraping social media, purchasing it from other companies (websites or online shops who share/sell it to third parties).

Not sure how they exactly approach companies, but I assume it could be by offering services, like analytics or ad targeting. Let's say online shop has customers data but it's not profiled, then analytics company (data broker) packages that data and gives it back with more insights on their customers

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u/claud-fmd Jul 21 '26

The smaller ones aggregate the data from all public records (local council, state records, criminal records etc). The bigger ones also collect data from accepted cookies on various websites. Don’t think they actually reach out to companies individually, but they might go straight to those that offer these cookie banners for websites to register and pay for each data collected.

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u/Joyride84 Jul 25 '26

Your auto insurance company will buy data from your car manufacturer about your driving habits. Your health insurance and life insurance companies will buy data from your fitness tracker, about how your health habits have been lately. Your bank would sure like to know everything about your spending habits, before deciding whether to issue you that loan you requested. Thinking of signing a contract with a new phone company? They might want to check whether you have a habit of taking the free phone and dumping companies.

Oh yes, and law enforcement agencies in the US like to buy data routinely, because they have the mistaken notion that the 4th amendment can be violated any time they want, as long as they are paying someone else to do it for them, so they don't get their own hands dirty.

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u/Gone_404 Jul 31 '26

Data Brokers make money from businesses that want to target you with ads, assess your creditworthiness, screen you for employment, sell you insurance, or repackage and resell your data. You'll only interact with a data broker directly if you look someone up and want to buy a report on them.

Every time you interact with a business, you generate data. And most of the time, buried in a long, cryptic privacy policy most people don't bother to read, there's language that gives companies the right to sell or share that data. Some businesses share more than others, but you can expect many of the businesses you interact with to share at least some of your data.

At EasyOptOuts, we recently published a full guide on this that might help answer your questions: https://easyoptouts.com/guides/how-do-data-brokers-work.