The Hidden Pipeline Feeding Scammers Your Data

Every year, Americans lose billions of dollars to scams. In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission received over 2.6 million fraud reports, with total losses exceeding $10 billion for the first time in history. But the question nobody asks often enough is: how do scammers get your personal information in the first place?

The answer might surprise you. It is not just phishing emails and data breaches. The single largest source of personal information for scammers is a $200+ billion industry most people have never heard of: data brokers.

Understanding how your information gets into the wrong hands is the first step toward stopping it.

1. Data Brokers: The #1 Source Scammers Rely On

Data brokers are companies that collect, aggregate, and sell personal information about individuals. There are over 4,000 data broker companies operating in the United States alone, and the average person appears on more than 50 data broker sites.

These companies collect everything about you:

Full name, aliases, and date of birth
Current and past home addresses
Cell phone numbers and landlines
Email addresses
Family members and associates
Estimated income and net worth
Political affiliation and religious views
Health interests and purchasing habits

How Scammers Use Data Broker Information

Data brokers sell this information to anyone willing to pay, often with no verification of intent. A scammer can purchase a detailed profile about you for as little as $0.50 per record in bulk, or $20-40 for a single detailed report on a people-search site like Spokeo or BeenVerified.

Armed with your name, address, phone number, and family details, scammers can:

Craft convincing phishing emails that reference your real address or family members
Call you by name and reference personal details to build false trust
Impersonate your bank or utility company using your real account details
File fraudulent tax returns using your Social Security number and address
Open credit accounts in your name

The Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that 68% of breaches involved a human element, meaning social engineering and credential theft. Data brokers provide the raw material that makes social engineering attacks convincing.

Why Data Brokers Are Legal (For Now)

Most data brokers operate legally under current US law. They aggregate information from public records, commercial transactions, and online activity. However, laws are changing. California's Delete Act (SB 362) will require all registered data brokers to honor deletion requests through a centralized platform starting August 1, 2026.

Until then, the burden falls on you to request removal from each broker individually, or use an automated service like GhostMyData to remove yourself from 1,500+ data brokers.

2. Social Media Scraping

Social media platforms are gold mines for scammers. Even with privacy settings enabled, a surprising amount of personal information is publicly accessible.

What Scammers Scrape from Social Media

Profile pictures (used for catfishing and fake profiles)
Check-ins and location data (reveals when you are away from home)
Friends and family lists (used for "grandparent scams" and impersonation)
Employment details (used for business email compromise)
Life events (new home, new baby, retirement, used to target you with relevant scams)

The Facebook Quiz Problem

Those "fun" quizzes asking your first car, your mother's maiden name, or the street you grew up on are collecting common security question answers. Scammers create these quizzes specifically to harvest this information.

How to Protect Yourself

Set all social media profiles to private
Remove personal details like phone numbers and birthdays from public profiles
Never share security question answers in quizzes or posts
Audit your friends list regularly for accounts you do not recognize
Disable location sharing on posts

3. Phishing and Social Engineering

Phishing is the direct approach: scammers contact you and trick you into revealing information. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received over 298,000 phishing complaints in 2023, making it the most reported cybercrime category.

Modern Phishing Is Sophisticated

Today's phishing attacks are not the poorly spelled Nigerian prince emails of the past. Modern phishing includes:

Spear phishing: Targeted emails referencing your real employer, recent purchases, or family members (often sourced from data brokers)
Smishing: SMS-based phishing texts disguised as delivery notifications, bank alerts, or toll notices
Vishing: Voice phishing calls from spoofed numbers that appear to be your bank or government agency
QR code phishing (quishing): Malicious QR codes placed on parking meters, restaurant menus, and fake flyers

Red Flags to Watch For

Urgency ("Your account will be closed in 24 hours")
Requests for passwords, SSN, or credit card numbers
Links that do not match the supposed sender's domain
Unexpected attachments, especially .zip or .exe files
Slight misspellings in email addresses or domains

4. Data Breaches

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, there were 3,205 data compromises in 2023, affecting over 353 million individuals. Your information has almost certainly been exposed in at least one breach.

Major Breaches That Exposed Millions

Breach

Year

Records Exposed

National Public Data	2024	2.9 billion records
MOVEit	2023	77 million
T-Mobile	2023	37 million
LastPass	2022	25 million
Equifax	2017	147 million

What Happens After a Breach

Stolen data is typically sold on dark web marketplaces within days. A complete identity (name, SSN, DOB, address, credit card) sells for as little as $15-30. Email and password combinations sell for $1-5.

How to Check If You Have Been Breached

Use HaveIBeenPwned.com (free) to check your email addresses
Enable breach notifications from your password manager
Monitor your credit reports via AnnualCreditReport.com
Consider a free privacy scan from GhostMyData to see your full exposure

5. Public Records

Much of your personal information is a matter of public record, freely accessible to anyone who knows where to look:

Property records: Your home address, purchase price, and mortgage details are public in most counties
Voter registration: Your name, address, party affiliation, and voting history are accessible in many states
Court records: Lawsuits, divorces, bankruptcies, and criminal cases are often publicly searchable
Business filings: If you own a business, your name and address are typically public
Marriage and birth records: Filed with county clerks and often searchable online

Data brokers systematically collect all of these records and combine them into comprehensive profiles. This is one of the primary reasons data brokers have so much information about you even if you have never signed up for anything.

6. Dumpster Diving and Mail Theft

It sounds old-fashioned, but physical information theft remains a real threat:

Pre-approved credit offers contain your name and enough information for identity theft
Bank and medical statements reveal account numbers and health information
Old tax documents contain Social Security numbers
Utility bills confirm your address and account details

How to Protect Physical Documents

Shred all documents containing personal information before discarding
Opt out of pre-approved credit offers at OptOutPrescreen.com
Use a locked mailbox or PO Box
Switch to paperless billing and statements
Pick up mail promptly, especially after an address change

7. Wi-Fi Eavesdropping and Malware

Public Wi-Fi networks at coffee shops, airports, and hotels are hunting grounds for data thieves:

Man-in-the-middle attacks: Intercepting data between your device and the network
Evil twin networks: Fake hotspots with names like "Free Airport WiFi"
Malware distribution: Infected apps or downloads that log keystrokes

Protection Steps

Use a VPN on all public Wi-Fi networks
Verify network names with staff before connecting
Keep your operating system and apps updated
Use antivirus software on all devices
Enable two-factor authentication on all accounts

The Scam Lifecycle: How It All Connects

Here is how these sources typically work together in a real scam:

Data broker purchase: Scammer buys a list of 10,000 people over age 65 with their names, phone numbers, and addresses for a few hundred dollars
Breach data enrichment: Cross-references the list with leaked email/password databases
Social media research: Checks Facebook profiles for family photos and life events
Targeted attack: Calls the target, references their grandchild by name, claims the grandchild is in trouble and needs bail money wired immediately

This is not hypothetical. The FTC reports that impostor scams cost Americans over $2.7 billion in 2023 alone, and the median loss for phone-based scams was $1,480.

The Economics of Scamming

Understanding the economics helps explain why scams are so persistent:

Cost to acquire 10,000 phone records from data brokers: $50-500
Cost of VoIP calling software to dial all 10,000: $50/month
Success rate for phone scams: Approximately 1-3%
Average take per successful scam: $500-5,000
ROI for the scammer: Even at 1% success, 100 victims x $500 = $50,000 on a $500 investment

The data broker industry is the engine that makes this math work. Without cheap, bulk access to personal phone numbers and biographical details, the cost of targeting individuals would be prohibitively high for most scam operations.

Why Scams Keep Getting More Convincing

Scams evolve because the data available to scammers keeps improving. Ten years ago, a scammer might have had your name and phone number. Today, a data broker profile can include your age, estimated income, political affiliation, health interests, recent purchases, and family members' names. AI voice cloning tools can now replicate a family member's voice from a few seconds of social media audio. The more data available, the more convincing the scam.

How to Protect Yourself: A Complete Checklist

Immediate Actions

[ ] Freeze your credit at all three bureaus (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion)
[ ] Enable two-factor authentication on email, banking, and social media
[ ] Check HaveIBeenPwned.com for breach exposure
[ ] Set social media profiles to private
[ ] Opt out of pre-approved credit offers

Ongoing Protection

[ ] Use a password manager with unique passwords for every account
[ ] Monitor your credit reports quarterly
[ ] Shred physical documents before discarding
[ ] Use a VPN on public Wi-Fi
[ ] Remove your information from data brokers

The Data Broker Problem

You can manually opt out of data brokers one by one, but there are over 4,000 of them, and many re-list your information within months. The average person would need to submit over 200 individual opt-out requests and repeat the process several times per year.

GhostMyData automates this entire process. We continuously scan 1,500+ data broker databases, submit opt-out requests on your behalf, and monitor for re-listings. See our pricing plans or start with a free scan to see where your data is currently exposed.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do scammers get my phone number?

The most common source is data brokers, which aggregate phone numbers from public records, commercial databases, app permissions, and online forms. Your phone number is likely listed on dozens of people-search sites right now. Data breaches and social media profiles are secondary sources.

Can scammers do anything with just my name and address?

Yes. With your name and address, scammers can search data brokers for additional information, send you phishing mail that appears to be from your local government, file change-of-address forms to redirect your mail, and use the information for identity verification challenges.

How do I know if my information is on data broker sites?

You can search for yourself on sites like Spokeo, BeenVerified, and Whitepages, or run a free scan with GhostMyData to check 1,500+ data broker databases at once.

What is the most effective way to stop scammers from getting my data?

The most effective single action is removing yourself from data brokers, since they are the primary aggregation point that feeds all other scam channels. Combined with a credit freeze, strong passwords, and two-factor authentication, this dramatically reduces your attack surface.

Are data brokers legal?

Most data brokers operate legally under current US law. However, regulations are tightening. California's CCPA (Section 1798.99.80) requires data brokers to register with the state and honor deletion requests. The EU's GDPR Article 17 provides a "right to erasure" that applies to any company processing EU residents' data.