Removed: nothing, until a regulator made it stop. The company kept building and selling profiles by drawing inferences across billions of public records, without registering as a data broker.
Outcome: three years without operating as a data broker, through 2028, with a $50,000 penalty if it resumes.
The California Privacy Protection Agency’s Enforcement Division reached a settlement with Background Alert, Inc. on 27 February 2025; the Board approved it the day before. The company had to cease operations within 15 days and stay closed through 2028.
The order resolves a gap the registry makes visible: businesses that operated as data brokers in 2024 had until 31 January 2024 to register. Background Alert registered on 8 October 2024 — 250 days late, as its Stipulated Final Order records — and the settlement covers the period it operated unregistered.
What it was selling matters to the argument. According to the order, it amassed billions of public records, drew inferences to identify people who “may somehow be associated with” a searched-for individual, and generated profiles from those patterns. Its own marketing line, quoted by the agency, was: “It’s scary how much information you can dig up on someone.”
This is the removal that only happened because someone was made to do it: no customer asked for less data, no engineering team decided the dataset was a liability. A registry and a strike force did.
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