You might not think much about the amount of information that’s available about you, but the details that data brokers can discover may change your mind. As agents that buy and sell information about people, data brokers profit off your personal information by selling it to the highest bidder.

What Are Data Brokers?

Data brokers are responsible for consolidating information about people from multiple sources online. Using several data points, they build a picture of you that big businesses and bad actors exploit for profit.

While legal, data brokerage has its roots in shady business practices. These took advantage of the period of internet history wherein everyone felt safe to share information about themselves without any agenda.

It’s important to understand that social media isn’t the only place where data brokers gather information. Data brokers also search public domain sources that are digitized and uploaded to the internet. From university records to court hearings, let’s look at several types of public records that data brokers gather online.

1. Voter Registration

Depending on your state, your voter registration may be considered a public record that is available to a variety of people, including data brokers. Typically, voter registration records include several types of personally identifiable information, including your name, birthday, home address, and political affiliation.

Some groups of people, such as victims of domestic violence or other violent crimes, can be granted more privacy to help keep them safe. However, most people’s voter registration information is shareable with political parties, candidates, businesses, journalists, law enforcement, government officials, and eventually, data brokers.

2. Birth Certificates

In the United States, a birth certificate is issued by the town, county, or state when an infant is born. Because they are considered legal public records, birth certificates are accessible to other people upon request. In some cases, data brokers can access birth certificates from online aggregators that consolidate them from various states.

Birth records reveal an individual’s full name, birth date, and place of birth. Aside from this, information about parents, sex, hospital, race, and religious affiliation can also be found on birth records.

3. Marriage Licenses and Divorce Records

Similar to birth certificates, marriage licenses and divorce records are public legal documents. Not only is this information available upon request, but data brokers can easily search for it in digitized, online archives and cross-reference it with inferred information from other channels.

Your civil status can reveal a lot about you, especially for brands seeking to make a profit. It’s an important data point for data brokers because it helps determine what life stage a person is in and thus what they’re willing to spend on.

4. Vehicle Registration

In general, license plate numbers used to identify vehicle registration are public records. From identifying registration status to inspecting the chain of ownership before a purchase, vehicle registration documents reveal a lot about a car’s owners.

License plates and vehicle registration are handled by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) of each state, and people can search these records quickly online. In fact, hackers sometimes target expiring driver’s license holders.

Vehicle registration information typically includes the name of the vehicle’s owner, their date of birth, and their address. In addition, the DMV also has access to information related to driver’s licenses, such as any history of motor accidents, incarcerations, and other records.

5. School Affiliations

The place where someone studied reflects a lot about their social and professional networks, earning potential, and experiences. For that reason, it’s no surprise that school information is one of the most common types of public records that data brokers try to access.

Unfortunately, it’s also one of the easiest pieces of public information to find online.

In addition to viewing your social media profiles like Facebook and LinkedIn, data brokers can access your school affiliations through alumni memberships, school promotional events, or even lists of board passers for certification exams.

6. Court Records

In the United States, the majority of court records are publicly available information. However, some records can be deemed confidential either by law or court ruling, such as proceedings related to children, mental health, adoption, and other sensitive subjects.

In most cases, you can access court records stored by the federal courts’ Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system. Many records are available through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) service from the US Courts. That means anyone with a PACER account, including potential data brokers, can search appellate, district, and bankruptcy court case information.

7. News Information

If you are somewhat of a public figure, you might have the experience of your name appearing in the newspaper sporadically. With so much of the news appearing online, it’s understandable that any information published about you in print or digital media can be included in various data brokerage databases.

Data brokerage firms prioritize the expected profitability of an individual. As a result, the information of influential people, such as those regularly featured on the news, is considered prime real estate for data mining.

The Loss of Privacy and the Right to Forget

Unfortunately, it’s no longer possible to erase your existence on the web completely. Much of what data brokers know about people can be inferred from public sources, such as those in this list. Aside from these, they can also look at outside sources like Wi-Fi connections, people that are in close proximity, and even offline loyalty cards to reveal personal information. While you can reduce your social media usage, the reality is that true anonymity is usually out of your hands.

The internet is increasingly becoming a space where privacy has lost value and people have lost the right to be forgotten. However, there’s some hope. You can still take some steps to limit how much information data brokers can find about you.