Your personal data isn’t just sitting in a credit bureau vault. It’s being actively spread across the internet through a little-known practice called credit header sales.
What Are Credit Headers?
Credit headers are a snapshot of your key identifying information, including:
Full name
Addresses
Phone numbers
Emails
Even your Social Security Number and other identifiers
Credit bureaus can freely sell this data—and they do—to a wide range of entities including marketers and data brokers.
Why Header Sales Hurt
The sale of credit headers comes with serious risks:
Data proliferation: Your sensitive information ends up in countless hands, increasing the risk of identity theft and privacy violations.
Lack of regulation: Unlike credit reports, credit header sales are largely unregulated, leaving you with little control over your personal data.
Data brokers: Credit bureaus often sell to (and even buy from) data brokers, further fueling the unregulated data trade.
The problem has grown so severe that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has stepped in. The agency has proposed new rules to curb credit header sales. However, strong industry lobbying efforts mean the outcome is still uncertain.
👉 For more discussion about Credit Headers, see this post by Jeff Jockisch on LinkedIn.
The Deeper Issue: Data Brokers and the Resellers Exemption
At the root of the problem lies the unregulated data broker industry, which thrives under the Resellers Exemption in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
This exemption allows data brokers to buy and sell personal data without any real oversight, leaving consumers exposed to risks without meaningful protections.
What Can You Do?
While systemic reform is necessary, you can take steps to better protect your personal data:
Be aware: Understand how your information is being collected, used, and sold.
Opt out: Where possible, remove yourself from data sharing and marketing lists. (ObscureIQ can help you navigate this process.)
Support privacy legislation: Advocate for stronger laws that give individuals more control over their data.
Experts Discuss Data Privacy
David Mauro interviews Merry Marwig, a data privacy advocate, and Jeff Jockisch, founder of ObscureIQ, about how data brokers work and how to delete your data by discussing the intersection of privacy and personal data.
