A funnel starts with something free: a guide to financial freedom, a two-hour webinar, a place in a community for people who want to leave their nine to five. You give a name and an email to get it. In the United States, lists of the people who took those offers are rented through brokers, and each list has a public card that says where the names came from.
On 29 September 2026 one card offered 320,000 people who signed up "for the FREE eBook" on financial stability, with 70,000 added in the past month, as "ideal targets for Prepaid Cards, Auto and Car Warranties, Debt Consolidation". Another offered 314,308 registrants of a free, two-hour webinar. A third offered 413,576 people who bought business-opportunity programmes at webinars or seminars, suggested for multi-level marketing and sweepstakes.
The FTC's rule for business opportunities makes the seller tell buyers in writing: "your contact information can be disclosed in the future to other buyers." In 2021 the marketing data company Epsilon admitted selling data on more than 30 million people to fraudulent schemes and paid $150 million.
What it shows
The free offer collects your details, and a list of people who answered one money-making offer is rented to the next seller, sorted by what they spent.
For your own record
Ask the seller who it has shared your details with, including anyone it calls a partner, and tell it to stop using them for marketing. In the UK and the EU it has to stop when you object. Then ask it to delete what it holds.