Data handling
Your data, your terms. Here's exactly how it's handled.
Your records describe real customers, clients and employees. This page lays out what we do, and what we refuse to do, to keep them out of the deal.
We don't hold your records. The license decides what moves.
thedata.broker doesn't take custody of raw data. We run the process and the negotiation on your side. The license is the document that defines what moves, in what form, and to whom.
01 · Your systems
Records stay where they are
Your code, tickets, files, calls and email remain in your systems, under your control. At intake you describe them in counts and dates. Nothing moves until you've signed a license.
02 · De-identification
Identifiers come out
Before delivery, names, contact details, addresses and account numbers are removed, the way the license specifies.
03 · The buyer you chose
Only the licensed scope
The buyer you signed with receives what the license names, for the uses it allows, and nothing else.
We coordinate each step, but your raw records never sit with us. Until a license is signed, all we work from is what you tell us at intake.
Buyers see a summary before they see you.
Before a qualified buyer bids, under NDA, they get a short anonymized description of your record. It's there so they can judge fit. It isn't built to let anyone work out who you are.
What a qualified buyer sees
Sector. Your industry, such as B2B software, freight brokerage or residential roofing.
Region. A broad region of the country, not your city or street.
History. A band for how many years of records you have, such as 5 to 10 years.
Volumes. Counts by kind of record (tickets, jobs, documents or call hours), rounded so they can't be matched to an exact export.
Size. Revenue and headcount as bands, never exact figures.
Shape of the work. Whether you mostly serve businesses or consumers, a rounded share of insurance work where that applies, and the license structure you're open to.
What stays out of it
Your company name. Not in the summary and not in the pitch.
Your website. Nothing a buyer could search to find you.
People. No owners, staff or customers, by name or by contact detail.
Addresses. No street addresses, and no location narrower than a region.
Of all the buyers, only the one you choose to sign with learns who you are.
Identifiers come out before anything is delivered.
Customer, client and employee identifiers are removed under the license, in a de-identification step that sits between your systems and the buyer.
Names
Customers, clients, employees and other contacts.
Email addresses
In messages, headers and records.
Phone numbers
In call logs, texts and contact fields.
Street addresses
Job sites, homes, offices and mailing addresses.
Account and reference numbers
Customer, policy, claim, matter and similar reference numbers.
Credentials and secrets
Keys, tokens and passwords that turn up in code, tickets or docs.
Calls and voice are a choice, not a default
A recording carries someone's voice, which identifies them in a way a name doesn't. So we walk you through the options and write the one you pick into the license:
- License transcripts with identifiers removed instead of audio.
- Leave calls out of the scope entirely.
- Leave out calls that don't have a documented recording notice.
Whether a set of recordings can be licensed at all depends on the notices callers heard and on the recording laws where they were. That's a question for your own lawyer. We aren't giving legal advice.
Photos and documents can carry identifiers too. Which ones are included, and how they're treated, is set per license, and you approve it before anything moves.
Some records stay out of every package by default.
These carry risks that aren't worth taking, or aren't yours to license. If you think something here belongs in your scope, raise it on a call. Nothing is added without your sign-off.
HR, payroll and performance
Pay, reviews and personnel files are about your people, not about how the work gets done.
Consumer financial information
Credit applications, lending files, and the nonpublic personal information banks, lenders, advisers and tax preparers hold about consumers.
Sources: 15 U.S.C. 6802 (opens in a new tab), 12 CFR 1016.3 (opens in a new tab)
Tenant screening
Screening reports on applicants and tenants are left out of any package.
Health information
Medical and injury details in claims, notes or messages. Protected health information stays out unless it has been de-identified to the HIPAA standard, and substance-use treatment records have stricter rules of their own.
Sources: 45 CFR 164.514 (opens in a new tab), 42 CFR Part 2 (opens in a new tab)
Privileged and client-confidential files
Legal advice, work product and client matter files, and a CPA firm's confidential client information, stay out unless each client has given documented consent, and any de-identification happens inside the firm.
Sources: ABA Model Rule 1.6 (opens in a new tab), ABA Formal Op. 512 (opens in a new tab), AICPA Code 1.700 (opens in a new tab)
Material you hold for clients
Files kept for a customer, client, insurer or general contractor often sit under confidentiality terms, and data your product processes for customers is theirs.
Telecom subscriber records
Call-detail, usage and account records a carrier or VoIP provider holds about its subscribers.
Student records
Education records about students. FERPA limits how they can be passed on, and small classes make de-identified records easy to trace.
Sources: 20 U.S.C. 1232g (opens in a new tab), 34 CFR 99.31 (opens in a new tab)
Third-party content
Vendor price lists, measurement reports, MLS data, research databases and open-source code are licensed to you, not owned by you, so they aren't yours to license on.
We don't broker these at all
Income tax return information
Income tax returns, the documents behind them, and the workpapers and notes a preparer derived from them. It stays out even when de-identified or aggregated, because the rules cover statistical compilations too.
Sources: 26 U.S.C. 7216 (opens in a new tab), 26 CFR 301.7216-1 (opens in a new tab), 26 CFR 301.7216-2 (opens in a new tab)
Controlled defense data
Controlled unclassified information and export-controlled technical data from government and defense work.
Sources: 32 CFR Part 2002 (opens in a new tab), DFARS 252.204-7012 (opens in a new tab), 22 CFR Parts 120–130 (opens in a new tab), 15 CFR Parts 730–774 (opens in a new tab)
The rule summaries on this page are general information, not legal advice. Each links to its primary source, and your own counsel should decide how they apply to your records.
What buyers can't do with your records.
These limits are part of every license. The exact wording, and any further obligations, are set in each signed license.
- No re-identification
- A buyer can't try to work out who the people or companies in the data are, or link records back to them.
- No contacting your customers or staff
- Nobody who appears in your records gets a call, text or email because of them.
- No voice cloning or likeness generation
- A buyer can't recreate a real person's voice or likeness from what they receive.
- No marketing to the people or businesses in the records
- The data can't be used to advertise or sell to the people or companies it describes.
- No resale outside scope
- A buyer can't resell, sublicense or hand the data on beyond what the license allows.
The signed license, not this page, is what binds a buyer. Have your own lawyer read it before you sign. This page describes our process and isn't legal advice.
You stay in control until you sign.
Four decisions are yours, and they're made before a buyer receives anything.
- 01
Scope
Which systems, which years, which uses. Anything outside the scope stays where it is.
- 02
Buyer blocklist
Rule out named competitors, whole industries or uses before bidding opens.
- 03
Exclusivity
Exclusive licenses usually pay more. Non-exclusive ones let you license again. You pick the trade-off.
- 04
Approval first
Nothing is delivered until you've signed off on the scope and signed the license.
How we handle what you tell us.
Separate from the records you might license, there's what we hold about you and your company while we work together.
- What we collect
- Your name and work email, your intake answers (your company, the systems you run, how much is in them, how far back they go, and your preferences on rights), and a phone number with a record of your consent if you choose to give one. The intake asks for counts, dates and descriptions, not your files. Like most sites, we also keep basic technical logs and page-view analytics.
- Who can see it
- You, the teammates you invite to your account, and our reviewers. If someone referred you to us, they see your company's name and where your intake or deal stands, not your answers. Until you sign a license, buyers see only the anonymized summary.
- In transit
- Everything you send us travels over an encrypted connection.
- Access
- Each company's account can reach only its own intake. When our reviewers move your file forward or export data, the action is logged with who did it and when.
- Retention
- Intakes you start but never finish are deleted after 12 months, and we email you a warning before that happens. Signing in and opening your intake after that warning keeps it.
- Deleting your answers
- You can ask us to delete them at any time. Write to hello@thedata.broker. The privacy policy has the full detail.
We broker companies' own operating records. We never buy or sell consumer profiles.