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Comment by hash872 | Hacker News Reader

As someone who's interfaced with the data brokers professionally, I can tell you that the ultimate starting point for their dataset is usually a state voter registration database. A lot of states pretty openly sell their data, like from the DMV, but every data broker is starting by figuring out a way to get that voter registration data- some states just give it, in some states (like say Maryland) you have to at least pretend to be an election researcher, etc. I'm sure for more restrictive states it gets passed around on the grey market.

But if you're anti-data broker (I certainly am!), it starts with regulating your own state

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> I can tell you that the ultimate starting point for their dataset is usually a state voter registration database.

Right on the money. I worked for a company that sold this data to whoever paid them .

This is only valid for the U.S. though.

What would be the best way to access this data for research? I do academic research (mostly focusing on credit) and it might be quite useful to write a paper that cross references this with loan data for a paper with a political angle.

Giving my phone number on my voter registration form is definitely one of my biggest regrets. I'm sure a lot of my spam calls/texts come from that, but even campaigns texting me to vote for their candidates has become a huge annoyance every election season (despite me moving and unregistering to vote in that state - once a data company has bought the list I don't think there is any escape)

Sooooo much this. I did it once and received multiple spam texts from various campaigns, was just a terrible decision.

While politicians in a few states have cracked down a bit on data brokers recently, I don't think there's too much danger that they're going to strongly regulate ones that service political campaigns....

Interestingly, on my phone # that I've had since the early 80s, I get election spam for me, my brother (who, amusingly, generally votes for the party I don't) and occasionally my mother. I actually get less spam than my brother does, and neither party seems to know who we vote for, so I get spam addressed to my brother from the party I generally vote for.

Apparently, these data brokers suck at their job.

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