Sources, usually Internet-based since the 1990s, may include census and electoral roll records, social networking sites, court reports and purchase histories.
[10] Beginning in the late twentieth century, technological developments such as the development of the Internet, increasing computer processing power, and declining costs of data storage made it much easier for companies to collect, analyze, store and transfer large amounts of data about individuals.
[11] As of 2021[update], there is no required academic qualification for the job of information broker; some people may have a bachelor's degree in business or marketing,[12] while others may have a background in library science, or may have worked for a database provider.
[2] Clients of information brokers come from a wide range of industries and professions, including manufacturing, financial institutions, political parties, government agencies and historians.
[17] Non-profit organizations might benefit from information which helps them to apply for grant funding, and real estate agents often use IBs to undertake land title searches.
[2][18] Advertising, fraud detection and risk mitigation are three common reasons for using data brokers,[3] and these are the three broad categories defined by the Federal Trade Commission.
[20] The data are aggregated to create individual profiles, often made up of thousands of pieces of information, such as a person's age, race, gender, height, weight, marital status, religious affiliation, political affiliation, occupation, household income, net worth, home ownership status, investment habits, product preferences and health-related interests.
[17] Data brokers in the United States include Acxiom, Experian, Epsilon, CoreLogic, Datalogix, Intelius, PeekYou, Exactis, and Recorded Future.
Under both of these circumstances, a warrant is not required to acquire this data, due to the fact that it is "open source" or "commercially obtained".
[26] In 2012, Spokeo, a people search website, settled with the US Federal Trade Commission for $800,000 over violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
[30] In 2018, American companies spent $19 billion acquiring and analyzing consumer data, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
[32] There is no federal law that permits or enables consumers to see, make corrections to, or opt out of data compiled by brokers.
The bill also gave identified individuals the means and opportunity to review and correct the data held that related to them.
[clarification needed][40] Due to the interest in federal regulation, data broker firms have lobbied and spent $29 million in the year 2020.
Their main findings were that: The information produced by data brokers has been criticized for enabling discrimination in pricing, services and opportunities.
[11] An Online Information Broker FAQ[41] is published by Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC), a nonprofit consumer organization in the United States.
PRC also maintains a list of information brokers, with links to their privacy policies, terms of service, and opt-out provisions.
A few of the characters in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash find work selling data as "stringers" for the Central Intelligence Corporation.