Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

Please excuse the frustrated tone; the "secrecy" all over the internet about the whole issue has been driving me insane.

The usual useless BS is "oh, these companies get it from governmental public records". Yeah, right. I'm pretty darn sure that some of the personal information I can find online on MyLife, Intelius, InstantCheckmate, Spokeo, etc. is not in some government agency's public record, and regardless, surely there's no way that hundreds of companies are repeating each others' work over and over again when they could just buy the information from someone.

Someone (or a few) hidden underneath has to be doing the heavy-lifting of scraping people's data from sketchy sources and selling them to third-party companies while staying hidden. My question is, who are these, and (where it is possible to know) whom are they selling to? How can I find out? Surely someone knows, and I'm tired of playing this goose chase where those who don't know just make random guesses as to how the information must be coming from some some public records, and those who do know say hardly anything beyond "you have to know where to look".

I'm not looking for just 1 pointer, though I would appreciate it. I'm tired of pointer chasing. I'm just looking for as comprehensive a list as possible. It has to exist somewhere... after all, when a court needs to order that someone's information be purged (for whatever reason, e.g. for safety), it's got to have a list of these data aggregators somewhere, so I'm sure some people must know. So how do I find out? I'm hoping to also learn to fish in addition to being given the fish.

Thank you!

I have insider knowledge as I used to work for one of these companies.

Depending on the product you purchase the data comes from multiple sources. Also these companies have sophisticated machine learning capabilities to build a profile based on various attributes found in seemingly unrelated pieces of data.

So the list consists of credit reporting agencies, public records, your online profiles with public access, court records, aggregators like LexisNexis and dozens like them.

This heavy lifting you speak of is done differently by each company and consists literally based on multiple sources to enrich your profile. These companies spend millions on data and engineering and make even more, and whatever preconceived notion you have about courts ordering to seal your records, it doesn't happen in a centralized fashion, you would need to contact each data vendor individually to be removed. But it would be like playing whackamole.

God is perfectly just. Humiliation equals exsaltation.

turn the other cheek.

If the eney asks you to confess one thing, confess two.

I talk to God.

There is perfect justice.

Have you ever gone to the doctor, signed up for a gym, or signed up for your local grocery store's membership rewards program?

That's how they get your information.

Uh, what? This doesn't explain a lot of the information I see on some of these sites. It only explains the basics like your address and phone number.