Data Broker

A data broker is a business whose product is you. Brokers collect personal information from public records, app SDKs, loyalty programs, web tracking, location feeds, and other brokers, then aggregate it into detailed profiles and sell or license access to them. Most people have never knowingly interacted with the brokers holding files on them, which is precisely what makes the industry effective and, critics argue, dangerous. It operates largely in the shadows of what Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism.

What they assemble

A single broker profile can infer thousands of attributes: where you live and move, what you buy, your inferred income, health interests, political leanings, family structure, and more, stitched together from billions of consumers. These inferences are sold to advertisers, insurers, employers, debt collectors, and sometimes government agencies. Because the data is aggregated rather than freshly collected from you, regulation is thin and consent is largely fictional in many jurisdictions.

Why this is a sovereignty problem

For someone holding Bitcoin, broker profiles are a concrete risk surface. Linking a public wallet address, a delivery address for mining hardware, or a KYC exchange record to a broadly sold identity profile can expose stack size and physical location to anyone willing to pay, including would-be thieves. Defending against brokers means minimizing the data you emit, using privacy-preserving purchasing and shipping where possible, opting out where regulators provide a mechanism, and treating every form field as a future entry in someone's database.

Data brokers are the supply chain of surveillance capitalism, and much of their raw material is the metadata your devices and transactions leak by default.