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They have separate divisions for FCRA and non-FCRA data, so which products and data points you have access to depend upon who you are and what you're doing with

They have separate divisions for FCRA and non-FCRA data, so which products and data points you have access to depend upon who you are and what you're doing with the data. I believe the data at issue in this article are non-FCRA, which puts it in a category I'd call "enterprise-grade public records search" (as opposed to consumer-facing public records companies like Intelius and Instant Checkmate). Yes, they are one of the few companies that does the legwork of directly ingesting public records. For example, they buy and resell a lot of data from DMV agencies in states where the DMV is authorized to sell it (Google DPPA for more info). It is otherwise nearly impossible to get these data. I have tried, with the help of the right lawyers, and concluded that the only way to do it would be to sue the DMV.

394549 8y ago
> They have separate divisions for FCRA and non-FCRA data, so which products and data points you have access to depend upon who you are and what you're doing with the data. Do they still any of that data in bulk, or only in a productized form for a particular requested person or group of people (e.g. a company's customer list)? Just trying to get a sense of how extensively their data might be getting repackaged and sold by others.
- staticautomatic 8y ago
  It depends on what sort of data broker you're talking about. For companies like Lexis, I'm pretty sure the answer is no. You can't just blindly buy a giant batch of data (this may have to do with regulatory requirements governing access to certain data points). However, you could totally do that with a marketing/"lifestyle" data broker like Acxiom, BlueKai, Epsilon, etc. I once directly asked a sales rep if they would sell me, say, all of the data they have on everyone in San Francisco County. Their answer was yes, with the caveat that it would be really expensive. Edit to answer: >Just trying to get a sense of how extensively their data might be getting repackaged and sold by others. Reselling is certainly not prohibited, provided the broker understands and approves of the purpose of the resale. I would guess that most consumer-facing background check tools are really just reselling data from one of the big public records brokers (Lexis, WestLaw, TLO, etc.). Some will just charge you higher monthly minimums for the privilege of reselling. The marketing/"lifestyle" data brokers are much stricter about prohibiting resale.

394549 8y ago

> They have separate divisions for FCRA and non-FCRA data, so which products and data points you have access to depend upon who you are and what you're doing with the data. Do they still any of that data in bulk, or only in a productized form for a particular requested person or group of people (e.g. a company's customer list)? Just trying to get a sense of how extensively their data might be getting repackaged and sold by others.

staticautomatic 8y ago
It depends on what sort of data broker you're talking about. For companies like Lexis, I'm pretty sure the answer is no. You can't just blindly buy a giant batch of data (this may have to do with regulatory requirements governing access to certain data points). However, you could totally do that with a marketing/"lifestyle" data broker like Acxiom, BlueKai, Epsilon, etc. I once directly asked a sales rep if they would sell me, say, all of the data they have on everyone in San Francisco County. Their answer was yes, with the caveat that it would be really expensive. Edit to answer: >Just trying to get a sense of how extensively their data might be getting repackaged and sold by others. Reselling is certainly not prohibited, provided the broker understands and approves of the purpose of the resale. I would guess that most consumer-facing background check tools are really just reselling data from one of the big public records brokers (Lexis, WestLaw, TLO, etc.). Some will just charge you higher monthly minimums for the privilege of reselling. The marketing/"lifestyle" data brokers are much stricter about prohibiting resale.