Broker profile
AtData
An email-intelligence data broker formed in October 2021 by merging TowerData (founded 2001, New York) with FreshAddress (founded 1999, Boston). It sells email verification, append, demographic enrichment, and fraud-scoring data to marketers and fraud teams, anchored on a graph of 2.4 billion email identity linkages covering roughly 98% of the emails it sees. Founder Tom Burke has been CEO since 2001. On February 24, 2026, Experian closed its acquisition of AtData, its first major acquisition in 16 years.
AtData overview
At a glance
- Data published
- Moderate
- Re-listing frequency
- One-time
- Complaint record
- Mixed
- Opt-out friction
- Moderate
- Operator opacity
- Fully disclosed
- Prior data incidents
- None documented
Each broker is scored 1 to 4 across the six dimensions above; higher means more exposure, and the overall gauge is their average.
What each dimension means
- Data published: how much and how sensitive the personal data they put out.
- Re-listing frequency: how quickly you reappear after opting out.
- Complaint record: volume and pattern of complaints across BBB, Trustpilot, and Sitejabber; no findable review presence counts against the broker.
- Opt-out friction: how hard the removal process is to complete.
- Operator opacity: how hidden the operating company and its principals are.
- Prior data incidents: history of breaches or leaks of the data they hold.
- Category
Email intelligence · marketing & fraud data
- Operating entity
AtData
- Formed as AtData
October 2021
- CEO
Tom Burke
- Headquarters
33 Irving Place, New York, NY
- Ownership
Experian
- Profile scale
2.4B identity linkages · 98% emails profiled
- Active litigation
None public
- FCRA covered?
No
Background
Background
AtData is what happened when the two longest-running US email-data companies finally combined. TowerData launched in 2001 in New York under Tom Burke, selling email-append services to marketers. FreshAddress started even earlier - 1999, Boston area - as a free Email Change of Address (ECOA) consumer service that grew into a B2B email-validation business. Both companies spent 20 years building parallel email-data assets. In October 2021 they merged, backed by private-equity firm TZP Growth Partners, and rebranded the combined business as AtData. In February 2026 Experian acquired AtData outright - Experian's first major acquisition in 16 years - and folded it into its North American identity / fraud product line.
- FreshAddress founded
1999, Boston area
- TowerData founded
2001, New York City
- TowerData acquires Rapleaf
- TZP invests in FreshAddress
- TowerData acquires Xverify
- TowerData acquires Bouncepilot
2020
- TowerData + FreshAddress merge
- Experian acquires AtData
AtData's product framing is that the email address is the most durable consumer identifier in a cookie-deprecation world - more persistent than mobile ad IDs, less encumbered by browser-level privacy controls, and used as a primary key across hundreds of ecommerce, fintech, and marketing platforms. The data assets reflect that. There's an email-anchored identity graph tying alternate emails, postal addresses, phones, demographics, behavioral signals, and risk scores to each known account. AtData's own homepage claims 2.4 billion email identity linkages, 150 billion+ monthly email activity signals, 80 billion+ emails verified historically, and profiles on 98% of the emails it observes. The Experian deal announcement separately cited 10 billion email addresses worldwide as the data-scale figure.
The Experian deal in February 2026 was widely reported as Experian's largest strategic acquisition in over a decade. Experian CEO of North America Jeff Softley framed the rationale as building "real-time identity signals" into Experian's AI-era decisioning stack. AtData fits into Experian's marketing / identity verification / fraud product line - not the FCRA-regulated credit-reporting arm. Tom Burke remains CEO of AtData and reports into Softley. TZP Group exited at the deal close.
AtData is a different shape of "data broker" than the people-search brokers in this directory. Like LiveRamp, Acxiom, and Epsilon, AtData is enterprise-only - the data lives in paid APIs and data-license agreements, not a consumer-facing lookup page. The privacy concern is the email-anchored identity resolution: every time you give a brand your email address, AtData's downstream customers can potentially append demographic attributes, postal address, phone, alternate emails, and behavioral history to it. The data also feeds fraud-scoring systems that decide whether you can complete a checkout or open an account.
What the Experian acquisition means for opt-outs. AtData and Experian operate as separate compliance entities post-deal. An opt-out submitted to AtData (via the InstantData portal or privacy@atdata.com) covers AtData's email-intelligence data but does not propagate to Experian's separate marketing-data products or its FCRA-regulated credit file. To address Experian's credit-side data, you need to go through Experian directly; see the Experian profile and the OptOutPrescreen.com jointly-operated CRA opt-out for prescreened credit offers.
Data Published
Data types
Email addresses (10B+ globally; ~98% of active North American accounts)
Alternate emails tied to the same person (the historical FreshAddress ECOA product)
Full names, postal addresses, phone numbers
Demographic and household attributes (age range, income, household composition)
Lifestyle and inferred-interest segments
Email-engagement signals (open rate, list-quality scores via SafeToSend / List Guard)
Risk-scoring data (fraud propensity, account age, suspicious-domain signals)
Domain and IP analytics (used for SafeToTrust fraud detection)
Website Visitor ID resolution (matching anonymous web visitors to email-anchored profiles)
Email Identity File and Open Score Intelligence (licensed data products)
Where the data comes from: AtData aggregates first-party data from publisher and brand partnerships, marketer-uploaded customer lists used for validation and appending, public records, and a network of cooperative data partnerships built up across both TowerData's and FreshAddress's 20+ years of operation. The Rapleaf acquisition in 2013 added demographic and lifestyle data. The Xverify acquisition in 2019 added real-time email-validation infrastructure (11B+ emails verified at the time of acquisition). The Bouncepilot acquisition in 2020 added marketing-automation behavioral signals.
Email-as-primary-key is the whole product. AtData's data model is built around the assumption that email addresses are the most durable cross-context consumer identifier. Submit your email at a checkout, a newsletter signup, a fintech onboarding, or a loyalty program, and that email can be passed to AtData (or to a customer of AtData) to be enriched with everything else AtData knows, from postal and phone through demographics, behavioral history, and risk score. The data also flows into fraud-decisioning systems that decide whether you can complete the transaction.
Contact
Contacts & links
- Operating entity
AtData (TowerData, Inc.) · Experian subsidiary
- New York headquarters
33 Irving Place, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10003 +1 (646) 742-1771
- Privacy office (Massachusetts)
AtData, Attn: Privacy Officer 770 Legacy Place, 2nd Floor Dedham, MA 02026
- Privacy phone
- Privacy email
- Opt-out portal
- Privacy policy
- Vermont Data Broker registration
- CA Data Broker registry
AtData, LLC · 2024: 9,355 requests to delete - 8,870 complied in whole, 485 denied, 38-day median response - cppa.ca.gov/data_broker_registry/
- General website
Network
Sister brands
AtData sits inside Experian North America as of February 2026. The relevant peer group is split between the Experian corporate family (separate compliance footings) and the broader marketing-data / identity-data ecosystem.
How AtData differs from the identity-resolution peers. LiveRamp and Acxiom resolve consumer identity across many signals (name, address, phone, device IDs, cookie IDs, offline history). AtData's model is narrower and deeper around one signal - the email address - which it treats as the most durable post-cookie identifier. That focus is why Experian wanted it specifically. Email is the field most consumers hand to brands voluntarily, and it's the most reliable index into the rest of Experian's identity-and-fraud stack.
AtData is operationally separate from Experian's other data lines
Despite being part of Experian as of February 2026, AtData operates on a separate compliance footing from Experian's FCRA-regulated credit-reporting business and from Experian Marketing Services. An opt-out submitted to AtData covers AtData's email-intelligence data only. To address Experian's credit file, marketing data, or prescreened-offer lists, you need to use the Experian-specific opt-out flows (see the Experian profile and OptOutPrescreen.com).
Reputation
Trust signals
AtData is enterprise-facing - the customers are advertisers, marketers, and fraud-decisioning teams who interact through APIs and contracts, not consumer-facing products. Consumer-side trust signals are thin accordingly. The strongest available signals are the Vermont Data Broker registration (long-standing under the TowerData name), the absence of major litigation or breach history on the public record, and the February 2026 Experian acquisition - which subjects AtData to a publicly traded parent company's compliance and disclosure standards.
No FTC enforcement action against TowerData, FreshAddress, or AtData
No state Attorney General consent decree or settlement
No publicly disclosed data breach involving AtData's email graph
No class-action settlement on record (no PACER hits for active private litigation)
No major consumer-press investigation (compare to the FTC's case against Rapleaf in 2010, which predated TowerData's acquisition of Rapleaf in 2013)
What's notably absent from the public record:
Litigation
Litigation history
No major public consumer-privacy litigation, FTC enforcement, or state Attorney General consent decree against TowerData, FreshAddress, or AtData is on the public record. The relevant regulatory framework is state-level privacy law (CCPA / CPRA in California, plus the growing list of state comprehensive-privacy laws) and Vermont's Data Broker Act, which has historically required annual registration.
Related and contextual matters worth noting:
- Rapleaf FTC matter predates TowerData ownership. The FTC investigated Rapleaf in 2010 over kids'-data-collection practices, before TowerData acquired Rapleaf in 2013. The matter resolved before the acquisition; TowerData / AtData does not inherit consent-decree exposure from it.
- The broader CIPA / Wiretap wave. California-court litigation against identity-resolution and marketing-data brokers has been intensifying (see the active LiveRamp N.D. Cal. case and the Oracle / Datalogix $115M Katz-Lacabe settlement). AtData has so far avoided being named in those cases, but the legal theory - that identity-resolution constitutes "interception" of consumer communications - applies structurally to AtData's email-anchored graph as well.
- Vermont registration history establishes a long compliance baseline for the TowerData / AtData entity but is not itself an enforcement event.
- Experian's public-company disclosure obligations now extend to AtData operations. Material AtData litigation, if any arose, would appear in Experian's interim and annual filings starting with the FY2026 cycle.
FAQ
Q & A
Is AtData a data broker?
Yes. AtData (formerly TowerData) is an enterprise-facing email-intelligence and identity-resolution data broker. Its proprietary database covers more than 10 billion email addresses worldwide and an estimated 98% of active North American email accounts. Customers - mostly marketers, advertisers, and fraud-prevention teams - buy email verification, append, demographic enrichment, and risk-scoring data. AtData has no consumer-search page; the data lives in enterprise APIs and data-license agreements. AtData has historically registered as a data broker with the Vermont Secretary of State.
Who owns AtData?
AtData is owned by Experian as of February 24, 2026, when Experian announced the acquisition (terms undisclosed; reported as Experian's first major acquisition in 16 years). Before that, AtData was backed by private-equity firm TZP Group, which originally invested in FreshAddress in March 2018 and exited via the Experian sale. AtData itself was formed in October 2021 by merging TowerData (founded 2001 in New York by Tom Burke) with FreshAddress (founded 1999, Boston area). Tom Burke remains CEO and reports to Jeff Softley, CEO of Experian North America.
Did Experian acquire AtData?
Yes. Experian closed its acquisition of AtData on February 24, 2026 - widely reported as Experian's first major acquisition in 16 years. Terms were undisclosed. AtData now operates inside Experian North America's identity and fraud product line, kept separate from the FCRA-regulated credit-reporting arm. Tom Burke, AtData's founder and CEO, kept his title and reports to Jeff Softley, CEO of Experian North America. Private-equity firm TZP Group - which had backed the AtData side of the house since investing in FreshAddress in March 2018 - exited at deal close. See the Experian profile for the parent-company context and the Background section above for the full merger and acquisition timeline.
Why did Experian acquire AtData?
Experian's stated rationale is that the email address has become the most durable consumer identifier in a cookie-deprecation world, and AtData has one of the deepest US email-data graphs available: 2.4 billion email identity linkages, 80 billion+ emails verified historically, 150 billion+ monthly email-activity signals, and profile coverage on roughly 98% of the active emails it observes. Jeff Softley (CEO of Experian North America) described the deal as bringing "deep email intelligence into our platform" and feeding Experian's AI strategy. The acquisition strengthens Experian's identity-verification, fraud-decisioning, and marketing products by layering email signals on top of existing credit-side and identity-graph data - a bet that email-anchored identity resolution will be a core post-cookie advertising and fraud-prevention layer.
What information does AtData collect?
AtData maintains an email-anchored identity graph built from email addresses, alternate emails tied to the same person, postal addresses, phone numbers, demographic attributes, lifestyle and inferred-interest segments, email-engagement signals (open behavior, list-quality scores), risk-scoring data, domain and IP analytics, and email-age tracking used for fraud prevention. The company describes the data as supporting both marketing personalization and fraud-prevention use cases. Products include SafeToSend, SafeToTrust, List Guard, Email Append, Postal Append, Website Visitor ID, Email Identity File, Alternate Email File, and Open Score Intelligence.
What is AtData's pricing?
AtData's published SafeToSend (email validation) pricing is tiered by volume:
- 5,000 credits - $0.008 per credit
- 50,000 credits - $0.007 per credit
- 100,000 credits - $0.006 per credit
- 500,000 credits - $0.005 per credit
- Above 500K - contact AtData sales for custom rates
A third-party software directory snapshot from October 2024 also listed packaged tiers, starting with a Free Trial covering 100 verifications, Batch Validation starting at $0.01 per input at 25,000-input volume, and a Monthly Subscription starting at $100.00/month that adds the real-time API and integrations with major ESPs and marketing platforms. Larger enterprise data-licensing contracts (the full email-anchored identity graph, append products, fraud-scoring APIs at scale) are negotiated per customer with no public list price. For individual consumers exercising opt-out rights, the suppression at instantdata.atdata.com/optout is free.
What are some good AtData alternatives?
For email validation and verification specifically, the direct competitors are ZeroBounce, Kickbox, NeverBounce, BriteVerify (a Validity product), Webbula, and Emailable - all offering real-time email-list cleaning, risk scoring, and bulk validation at comparable volume tiers. For email-anchored identity resolution at scale, the closest peer is LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP); Acxiom (Omnicom-owned) and Epsilon (Publicis-owned) cover the broader marketing-data space and are also profiled in this directory. Now that Experian owns AtData, Experian Marketing Services' own ConsumerView marketing-data product is the obvious in-house alternative offered by the same parent. None of these alternatives is a one-stop equivalent to AtData's full email-data stack, but together they cover the verification, validation, and identity-resolution use cases individually.
Can I remove myself from AtData?
Yes - and it's genuinely one of the easiest opt-outs in this directory. AtData runs an opt-out portal at instantdata.atdata.com/optout where you submit your email address, first name, last name, street address, city, state, country, and ZIP. Click Submit and AtData processes the suppression on the spot - no email verification step, no link to click later. The opt-out covers targeted advertising, sale of personal data, profiling for significant decisions, and direct-marketing processing. AtData also accepts data-subject-rights requests by email at privacy@atdata.com or by phone at 833-293-0973. As a California-registered data broker, AtData must process verified CCPA / CPRA deletion requests within 45 days. See our AtData removal guide for the field-by-field walkthrough with screenshots.
Has AtData been involved in any major lawsuits?
No major public consumer-privacy litigation against TowerData or AtData is on record as of this writing. Neither the FTC nor any state Attorney General has announced enforcement against the company. There is no consumer Better Business Bureau profile, no public data-breach disclosure, and no class-action settlement on record. The relevant regulatory framework is state-level privacy law (CCPA / CPRA for California consumers, plus the growing list of state comprehensive-privacy laws) and Vermont's Data Broker statute, which has historically required AtData / TowerData to register annually with the Vermont Secretary of State.
Is AtData covered by FCRA?
No. AtData is not a Consumer Reporting Agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The data is marketing and fraud-prevention data, not consumer reports, and the AtData terms of service prohibit use for FCRA-covered decisions (employment screening, tenant screening, credit, insurance). Following Experian's February 2026 acquisition, AtData operates inside Experian North America but specifically inside the marketing / identity-fraud product line rather than the FCRA-regulated credit-reporting arm. Experian's credit-side data and AtData's email-intelligence data are kept on separate compliance footings.
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May 28, 2026