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 batc

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.