$161 bought Straight Arrow a downloadable list of 60 affluent New York suburban smokers, each with 86 data points including income, politics, ethnicity and buying habits.
Exact Data says it holds records on 230 million people across 700 categories from more than 2,000 sources, selling one-off lists and monthly access starting at $99 after a brief phone verification.
Privacy advocates said such marketing profiles can expose highly sensitive traits and have fueled fraud, stalking and political targeting; court records show a Minnesota assassin used as many as 11 brokers to find lawmakers' addresses.
The industry was worth an estimated $270 billion globally in 2024 and is projected to top $470 billion by 2032, while U.S. oversight remains a patchwork of state laws with no federal privacy regime.