high severity August 15, 2026 · 4 min read Unverified claim — what this is

LocateSmarter data broker fine: did they sell your Social Security number?

If you are a customer of LocateSmarter, here’s what is being claimed, and what it would mean for you.

California ordered Iowa data broker LocateSmarter LLC to pay $116,490 after it sold personal information — including Social Security numbers and driver’s license details — without registering and after making opt-outs unusually hard. The company admitted the facts. There is no public list of whose data was involved, and copies already sold cannot be pulled back.
— from the group that posted this listing’s own leak-site posting. This is the group’s claim, quoted verbatim; it is not GalaxyWarden’s reporting and has not been independently verified.

LocateSmarter data broker fine: did they sell your Social Security number?

On August 11, 2026, the California Privacy Protection Agency announced an order — signed the day before and effective immediately — requiring Iowa-based LocateSmarter LLC to pay $116,490 and change its practices. That total is a $30,600 fine for missing the January 31, 2026 data-broker registration deadline (covering 2025 activity), a $6,000 registration fee, and a $79,890 fine under California’s consumer privacy law. LocateSmarter admitted the facts. Officials called this the first enforcement action against a data broker under that privacy law, and the first under both that law and the Delete Act.

Already exposed?

You can’t unleak data. You can take away what it’s worth.

A leaked record is where it starts, not where it ends. What turns it into your front door is the look-up sites publishing your address beside your name — and those are what an AI reads when somebody asks about you. The free scan shows you both. We write to 580 companies.

See what is exposed about you — free scan →

Not ready yet? Run a free breach check on this email

We’ll email that address a link. Open it and we check it against 13.1B+ leaked records — no account needed. Continuous monitoring & alerts are part of Protection.

The agency found the company collected personal information, in part through licensing agreements, and sold it without timely registration. The information included names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers, email addresses, employment information, driver’s license information, bankruptcy and litigation records, and inferences such as whether someone is “litigious.” Its opt-out form asked Californians for a full name, mailing address, and the last four digits of a Social Security number. Only a mere handful of people submitted requests. The order does not say how many people had their information collected or sold.

Nobody hacked them. They were already selling the file.

Most coverage leads with “historic first fine” and a missed registration deadline. That is the regulator’s story. It is not the part that changes anything for you.

LocateSmarter is a data broker. You almost certainly never opened an account with them. They assemble records from other companies and sell them. California’s order is about skipped paperwork and a hostile opt-out form — not about whether those dossiers existed. They did. The company has already admitted it sold them. A Social Security number and a court-record flag were not a side effect of this case. They were the product.

You’ve used today’s 5 free articles · resets tomorrow

Create a free account to keep reading

The rest of this article comes straight back — free, no card, nothing you’ve already read goes away. Then see whether your own data is exposed too: the scan on this site is free with or without an account, and the account is what keeps the result after the emailed link expires.

Reading this for a company?

GalaxyWarden Signals watches the organisations you name and emails you when one of them actually discloses — SEC 8-K Item 1.05 filings and corroborated breach records, with a JSON API. It monitors companies, not people: it does not scan you and does not remove your personal data.

See GalaxyWarden Signals →

Or make a free reader account first

Free reader account

No card, no charge. You read the blog without a limit — every article, no daily count — and it saves your exposure-scan results so you can open them again after the emailed link expires. We won’t email you anything else unless you tick the box asking us to. The next step shows what the paid plans add — free stays the first option on it.

Create a free account →

Free accounts are for personal use. If you’re reading for a company, that’s Signals (terms).

Already have an account? Log in

What the free scan actually returns

Sample resultyou@email.comIllustrative — not a real person

Found on people-search siteswe remove these

These listings are live, public, and legal to remove — and removing them is what we do.

value redacted in this sampleage, relatives, address historySpokeo

value redacted in this samplephone, household, property recordsBeenVerified

value redacted in this sample580 companies checked

Found in breach recordsverifiedreported — unverified

Each record is labeled: confirmed breach data, or an attacker’s claim no one has verified.

verifiedvalue redacted in this samplepassword + phone · 2024telecom breach

unverifiedvalue redacted in this sampleclaimed in ransomware listing · 2026leak-site claim

Leaked data cannot be deleted from the internet — anyone claiming otherwise is lying. Broker listings can be removed. We do the second, and show you exactly what to fix from the first.

Report details & sourcing

Severity High identifiers that cannot be reissued, alongside documents or accounts that can be misused now

Disclosed August 15, 2026

Last reviewed August 15, 2026

Affected Unconfirmed

Data exposed Full namesDates of birthSocial Security numbersTelephone numbersEmail addressesEmployment informationDriver's license informationBankruptcy and litigation records +1 more

By GalaxyWarden Threat Research · Editorial & sourcing standards

Unverified claim — what this report is

This page documents a public listing on a ransomware/extortion group’s leak site, tracked via public threat-intelligence sources. A listing is the attacker’s claim. GalaxyWarden aggregates and reports such claims; we have not independently verified that a breach occurred, what data (if any) was taken, or the accuracy of anything the group asserts, and the named organisation has not necessarily confirmed the incident. Sections above describe what the listing shows and the group’s documented history — not verified findings about the named organisation. If you represent this organisation and believe anything here is inaccurate, tell us and we’ll review it promptly.

Editorial & sourcing policy

GalaxyWarden is a breach-monitoring service and news aggregator. We do not exfiltrate, host, purchase, or redistribute stolen data. Breach information is compiled from publicly accessible sources and threat-intelligence platforms, and is reported as claims attributed to their source. We promptly correct or remove material shown to be inaccurate — see our content & takedown policy or write to support@galaxywarden.com.

Related breaches

high February 25, 2019