If you have ever applied for a job, signed up for a credit card, bought a house, registered to vote, used social media, or simply owned a smartphone, your personal information is being bought and sold right now by companies you have never heard of. Your full name, home address, phone number, email addresses, employment history, salary estimates, political affiliation, shopping habits, driving behavior, and in some cases your precise GPS location are all available for purchase by anyone willing to pay.
There are over 2,415 known data brokers operating in the United States. Globally, the number exceeds 5,000. Collectively, the data brokerage industry is projected to earn over $365 billion annually by 2029. You are the product being sold.
This guide walks you through every category of data broker that holds your information, how to remove yourself from each one, and what tools exist to automate the process.
Most people think of data brokers as people-search websites like Spokeo or WhitePages. Those are the most visible, but they represent only about 500 of the 2,415 brokers tracking you. Here is the complete picture.
These are the brokers most people know about. They aggregate public records, social media profiles, and purchased data to create searchable profiles of nearly every American. Anyone can type your name into Spokeo, BeenVerified, TruePeopleSearch, or WhitePages and find your home address, phone number, relatives, and more. These sites are the number one source of information for stalkers, scammers, and identity thieves.
Removing yourself from the top 30 people-search sites is the single most impactful step you can take. These are the sites that show up when someone Googles your name.
Companies like Acxiom, Oracle Data Cloud, Epsilon, and LiveRamp collect your purchasing behavior, browsing history, and demographic information to build advertising profiles. These profiles are sold to marketers who target you with ads. Unlike people-search sites, these brokers operate almost entirely in the background. You never see them, but they see everything about you.
If you have ever been cold-called by a salesperson, a B2B data broker is likely how they found your number. Companies like ZoomInfo, Apollo, Lusha, and Cognism scrape LinkedIn profiles, business directories, and public filings to build databases of business contacts. Even if you are not a business owner, your work email and phone number are probably in these databases.
Background check companies like Checkr, GoodHire, and Sterling aggregate criminal records, employment history, education verification, and credit information. Many employers run background checks before hiring, and errors in these databases can cost you a job without you ever knowing why.
Beyond the three major credit bureaus, there are over 37 consumer reporting agencies that maintain files on you. These include ChexSystems (banking history), LexisNexis (insurance risk), FICO (credit scoring), and dozens of specialty agencies that track everything from rental history to medical payments to insurance claims.
This is the newest and fastest-growing category. Your car manufacturer collects GPS location, driving speed, braking patterns, and cornering behavior through connected vehicle services. GM was fined $12.75 million in 2026 for selling this data to LexisNexis and Verisk, who packaged it into insurance risk scores. Ford was fined $375,703 for making opt-outs deliberately difficult. Honda was fined $632,500 for sharing data with advertising partners without proper contracts.
Every purchase you make with a loyalty card, credit card, or online account generates data that retailers sell to data brokers. Walmart, Target, Amazon, and hundreds of other retailers track your purchasing history and sell it to marketing companies. Your grocery store knows more about your eating habits than your doctor does.
While HIPAA protects medical records held by your doctor, it does not cover health data collected by apps, wearables, pharmacies, or data brokers. Companies collect information about medications you purchase, fitness tracker data, health app usage, and even your visits to medical facilities through location tracking.
This is the category that most data removal services completely ignore. Four major companies sell your personal data directly to government agencies for surveillance purposes without a warrant.
Venntel and its parent company Gravy Analytics collect GPS location data from smartphone apps and sell it to the FBI, ICE, DHS, IRS, and the Secret Service. They track over 250 million devices processing 15 billion location signals per day. The FTC took enforcement action against them in December 2024, requiring deletion of all historic location data.
Fog Data Science sells phone location tracking to local police departments, marketing it as "mass surveillance on a budget." For $7,500-$10,000 per year, any police department can track the movements of every phone in a 12-mile radius dating back 180 days. EFF has documented at least 18 confirmed agency contracts — not the thousands sometimes claimed.
Babel Street's Locate X product tracks individuals' visits to sensitive locations including medical facilities, places of worship, and protest sites, and has been sold to DHS, the Department of Defense, and the Secret Service. Separately, the FBI has a contract worth up to $27 million for Babel Street's Babel X product, which mines social media for surveillance purposes.
Clearview AI operates a facial recognition database built by scraping billions of photos from social media without consent. Law enforcement agencies use it to identify suspects by uploading a photo and searching for matches.
You can remove yourself from every data broker for free. The process is legal, straightforward, and does not require any special tools. It does, however, require patience. Here is the manual process.
1 People-search sites: Visit each site, find their opt-out page, submit your information, and verify via email. Start with the top 30 sites that appear when you Google your name. Expect to spend 2-3 hours on this step alone.
2 Freeze your credit: Contact all four credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, Innovis) and place a freeze. This is free and prevents anyone from opening accounts in your name.
3 Opt out of prescreened offers: Visit OptOutPrescreen.com to stop prescreened credit card and insurance offers.
4 Register on the Do Not Call list: Visit DoNotCall.gov to reduce telemarketing calls.
5 Submit CCPA deletion requests: Send legal deletion demands to data brokers citing the California Consumer Privacy Act, Section 1798.105. This applies to any broker doing business in California, which includes virtually every major data broker, regardless of which state you live in.
6 Request CRA disclosures: Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you have the right to request a copy of every file maintained on you by all 37 consumer reporting agencies. Many require physical mail with a copy of your ID.
7 Opt out of bank data sharing: Under GLBA, your financial institutions share your data with affiliates unless you opt out. Contact each bank, credit card company, and lender to request an opt-out.
8 Opt out of car manufacturer data sharing: Contact your car manufacturer's privacy team and request deletion of all connected vehicle data including GPS location, driving behavior, and telematics.
9 Opt out of government surveillance brokers: Submit opt-out requests to Venntel (privacy@venntel.com), Fog Data Science (fogdatascience.com/opt-out), Babel Street, and Clearview AI. These require your Mobile Advertising ID, which you can find in your phone's privacy settings.
10 Repeat every 45 days: Data brokers re-collect your information continuously. A one-time removal is not permanent. You must resubmit deletion requests regularly to stay removed.
The hard truth about manual removal: Removing yourself from all 2,415 brokers manually takes an estimated 100-200 hours of work. Many brokers use CAPTCHAs, phone verification, physical mail requirements, and multi-step processes specifically designed to discourage you from completing the opt-out. And because brokers re-collect data every 30-90 days, you must repeat the entire process continuously.
As of August 1, 2026, California residents can submit a single deletion request covering over 600 registered data brokers through the state's DROP portal at privacy.ca.gov/drop. This is free and legally enforceable. Registered brokers must check DROP for new requests at least every 45 days, and noncompliance carries fines of $200 per request per day.
DROP is a major step forward, but it only covers registered brokers in California. The remaining 1,800+ unregistered brokers, plus brokers in other states, consumer reporting agencies, car manufacturers, and government surveillance contractors are not covered by DROP.
If you do not have 200 hours to spend manually opting out of thousands of brokers, data removal services automate the process. These services send deletion requests on your behalf and monitor for re-listing.
When evaluating a data removal service, ask these questions:
Nothing makes removal truly permanent. Data brokers re-collect your information from public records, marketing databases, app data, and other brokers on an ongoing basis. The only way to stay removed is continuous re-submission of deletion requests.
The most effective approach combines three strategies: automated CCPA deletion demands sent to every broker on a 45-day cycle, credit freezes that prevent new accounts from being opened, and reducing your data footprint going forward by limiting app permissions, disabling your mobile advertising ID, and opting out of car manufacturer data sharing.
Removal is not a one-time event. It is an ongoing process. The companies that collect your data never stop collecting it. Your protection should never stop either.
Including the government surveillance brokers, car manufacturers, and people-search sites that most services miss. Legal CCPA demands, not polite requests. Screenshot proof of removal. Continuous 45-day re-submission. Zero tracking. Veteran-founded. $9.95/month.
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