dig-through-data-brokerslisted

# Dig through data brokers People-search sites resell a blend of public records, marketing data, and self-reported data. They are fast, cheap lead generators and terrible evidence. The one rule that matters: **a broker record is a lead, never a fact.** Confirm every field you intend to use against the primary source the broker got it from — and if you cannot identify that primary source, do not use the field. ## What these services actually are Three input streams, blended and sold: - **Public records** — property deeds, court filings, business registrations, voter files where public, professional licences, bankruptcy, marriage and divorce. Authoritative at origin; the broker's copy is a stale transcription. - **Marketing and commercial data** — warranty cards, loyalty programmes, subscriptions, credit-header data, online forms, ad exchanges. Never verified, often inferred, frequently household-level rather than person-level. - **Self-reported and scraped** — profiles, résumés, forum posts, and whatever the broker's own users typed in. They also buy from each other, constantly. That is the most important structural fact about the category: one wrong record propagates across every brand, and cross-checking five brokers gives you five copies of one error wearing five hats. Apparent corroboration across brokers is worth close to nothing. ## Why the data is wrong - **Address history is append-only in practice.** Brokers add addresses and rarely retire them, so