How Melissa Collects, Sells, and Shares Your Personal Information
What is Melissa?
Melissa Data Corporation is a long‑established data quality and identity verification company that provides address, email, phone, and name verification, data enrichment, and customer data management tools for businesses. Melissa also maintains and licenses aggregated consumer and business contact and demographic data to customers for marketing, CRM, validation, and verification purposes, meaning it can act as a data broker by sharing or selling personal information sourced from public records and third‑party data licensors.
URL
melissa.com
Support
privacy@melissa.com
Type of Data Broker
Marketing
Aggression level
High
What Melissa collects and how your privacy is at risk
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This company is listed in our Top 100 Most Aggressive Data Sellers based on sensitivity and reach.
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Collects and sells basic details like your name, address, phone number, and email address.
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The company’s practices pose a heightened risk for identity theft, scams, discrimination, and profiling.
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Collects and monetizes data related to your income, spending habits, debts, and financial status.
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Tracks your browsing habits, online searches, shopping behaviors, and content preferences.
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Tracks and sells your location history, movements, and device-based geolocation data.
The risks shown are based on the types of personal data this company collects, sells, or shares.
Even limited data collection can expose you to serious privacy threats.
Companies like Melissa are selling your information right now.
Most data brokers make opting out difficult or impossible. We locate your exposed data, remove it, and continue monitoring as new brokers are added.
Create your free account now to see where your data is exposed and begin securing your privacy.
How to Opt Out and Remove Your Information from Melissa
Melissa offers data removal options through its Consumer Privacy Request Form and state data protection rights, such as under the California Consumer Privacy Act. Individuals can request deletion, access, or limits on sale/sharing of their personal information by submitting a request via the form on the Melissa Privacy Center, emailing the designated privacy contacts, or contacting support by phone. Opt‑out and removal processes are typically manual and may require identity verification, and results can take time to complete.
Enroll in mePrism Privacy to ensure continuous monitoring and removal from Melissa and other brokers.
Melissa Privacy Risks and How to Remove Your Personal Data
They scrape and aggregate your personal data:
Melissa collects personal information directly when you provide it through website forms, account creation, API use, and service interactions, recording contact data, usage metrics, and device details as part of service delivery. In addition to first‑party collection, Melissa licenses consumer and business data from third‑party data providers and publicly available sources and aggregates these into its lookups, verification, and enrichment products used by businesses for CRM and marketing purposes.
They engage in automatic data harvesting:
Melissa uses automated processes such as cookies, web beacons, and server log collection to gather information about how services are used, including search terms, page visits, and device characteristics. This behavioral information, combined with third‑party data appended through lookups, enables Melissa to provide enriched datasets to clients that may include demographic and firmographic details.
Opting out is possible, but removal is difficult:
Requesting data deletion from Melissa involves submitting a consumer privacy request or exercising rights under state laws such as CCPA/CPRA. Because Melissa integrates data from many sources and provides it to business clients, removal may not fully erase all instances of your data from third‑party systems, and the process can be challenging or slow. Using privacy monitoring and removal services can help track and manage ongoing data exposure.
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