A list of 121 data brokers operating in the US, available due to a new Vermont law requiring companies who buy and sell third-party personal data to register
You've probably never heard of many of the data firms registered under a new law, but they've heard a lot about you. A list, and tips for opting out. Tweets: @pasternack , @carnage4life , @irinissima_ , @wolfiechristl , and @wolfiechristl Tweets: Alex P. / @pasternack : want to see the mostly hidden companies trafficking in your personal data? Vermont's new data broker law offers a rare glimpse, so @smelendez and I made a list and sorry but it's so long http://www.fastcompany.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Vermont created a law that requires companies that buy & sell user data to register with the secretary of state. There are 121 companies on the list. Guess who's not on it? Facebook.Equifax, Oracle, Acxiom, Experian, etc & others I often call out are.http://www.fastcompany.com/ ... Irina Obushtarova / @irinissima_ : Here are the companies that have registered under Vermont's “data broker” law, with descriptions drawn from their websites or other sources where noted. #privacy http://www.fastcompany.com/... Wolfie Christl / @wolfiechristl : Good to have this registry. However, the law “doesn't require data brokers to disclose who's in their databases, what data they collect, or who buys it. Nor does it require brokers to give consumers access to their own data or opt out of data collection” http://www.fastcompany.com/... Wolfie Christl / @wolfiechristl : Extensive list of 121 consumer data brokers operating in the US, including companies that sell credit reports, background checks, tenant screening, ID verification, people search, insurance marketing... based on a registry established by a new Vermont law: http://www.fastcompany.com/... http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Fast Company's list is the first public artifact of Vermont's 2018 data broker registration law, which forces companies buying and selling third-party personal data to register, disclose breaches, and accept liability for misuse like racial profiling. The 121 names on the Secretary of State's registry — including familiar players like Equifax, Acxiom, Experian, and Oracle alongside dozens of firms most people have never heard of — turn an opaque market into something a consumer can actually inspect.
The timing matters because the underlying trade is growing fast: reporting earlier this year put data vendor sales on a path to triple to $10.1B by 2022, while researchers had already documented how brokers identify individuals and what they sell. The registry is transparency by paperwork rather than by consent — which is exactly why its later track record became contested ground.
First-order effects
- Consumers gain, for the first time, a name-by-name map of who holds their third-party data, with opt-out routes for each of the 121 registrants — the practical value Fast Company's list packages.
- Registered brokers now carry Vermont-specific obligations: annual registration, breach notification, and private litigation exposure if data is misused for profiling or discrimination.
Second-order effects
- Other states watching Vermont get a ready-made legislative template, and brokers face a multi-state compliance patchwork — a burden that falls hardest on small firms while large registrants like Acxiom and Equifax absorb it as cost of doing business.
- Publishing the registry invites scrutiny of who is missing from it: unregistered brokers operating outside Vermont's borders remain untouched, setting up the enforcement-gap fight that privacy experts later documented.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, data broker accountability becomes a state-by-state arms race between registries and evasion — privacy experts found state registration laws inadequately enforced, and EFF's later analysis of 750 registered brokers showed many skipping states with transparency laws, undermining the data-deletion tools built on top of them.
- The deeper structural question the registry surfaces is whether paper transparency substitutes for substantive limits: Vermont's model makes the industry visible but leaves its warrantless government-data channels — the territory Mobilewalla's letter to Sen. Wyden later exposed — largely unregulated.
The trend: Data broker regulation is emerging as a state-led transparency movement whose registries expose the industry faster than enforcement can discipline it.