Data Brokers: A Partial List
September 7, 2020
DarkCyber has fielded several inquiries in the last three months about data brokers. My response has been to point out that some data brokers are like quinoa farmers near Cusco: Small, subsistence data reselling; others are like Consolidated Foods, the industrialized outfits.
Yon can review a partial list of data brokers on this Github page. However, I want to point out:
- Non US data brokers have information as well. Some of that information is particularly interesting, and it is unlikely that the average email phisher or robocall outfit will have access to these data. (No, I am not listing some of these interesting firms.)
- There are several large data brokers not on this list. In my lectures I mention a giant data broker wanna be, but in most cases when I say “Amazon”, the response is, “My family uses Amazon a couple of times a week.” I don’t push back. I just move forward. What one does not know does not exist for some people.
- Aggregating services with analytics plumbing are probably more important than individual chunks of data from either the quinoa farmers or from a combine. Why? With three items of data and a pool of “maybe useful” content, it is possible to generate some darned interesting outputs.
Putting the focus on a single type of digital artifact is helpful, sometimes interesting, and may be a surprise to some uninformed big time researcher. But the magic of applied analytics is where the oomph is.
Stephen E Arnold, September 7, 2020
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Just what I ?as searching fo?, reg?rds fo? putting up.