Broker profile
Carney Direct
A direct-marketing list broker in Irvine, California, trading since 1991, that rents mailing lists, new-mover files, and append and enrichment services to other marketers. Its founder left Equifax to start it. It files with California's data-broker registry as Guidestar Direct, Corp., a name that appears nowhere on its own website. Its 2024 filing reports 400,410 deletion requests, every one granted; its own table for 2025 reports 309,598 deletions and zero opt-outs, on a site whose removal page leads with a global opt-out checkbox.
Carney Direct overview
At a glance
- Data published
- Moderate
- Re-listing frequency
- Recurring
- Complaint record
- No public record
- Opt-out friction
- Moderate
- Operator opacity
- Mostly 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: the volume and pattern of complaints across BBB, Trustpilot, and Sitejabber. No listing, or a listing with no reviews, 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
Direct-marketing list broker · data append and enrichment
- Legal entity
Guidestar Direct, Corp. · d/b/a Carney Direct Marketing
- Headquarters
Irvine, California
- Trading since
1991, by its own account
- Founder & owner
Peter Carney · ex-Equifax national sales manager
- CA deletion requests
400,410 on its 2024 registry filing · 309,598 in its own table for 2025
- Reported response time
11 days mean and median on the 2024 filing · 6.63-day average in its own 2025 table
- Opt-out
On-site form and a separate email · they do different jobs
- Consumer-facing search
None · you can't look yourself up here
Background
Background
Carney Direct is a list business rather than a lookup site. There's nothing to search yourself on, no record page with your name at the top, and no report to buy. It sells access to files of people, rented to other marketers, which is why most people who land on this page have never heard the name.
- Legal entity
Guidestar Direct, Corp.
- Trading name
Carney Direct Marketing
- Address
10 Hughes, Suite A201 Irvine, CA 92618
- Founded
1991
- Founder & owner
Peter Carney
- Toll-free
- Registry-filed phone
The company calls itself a full-service direct-marketing partner, and its product pages read that way. Analytics and modelling, data monetization, acquisition, custom database management, enrichment and enhancement, re-engagement and retention, and a datacards section for browsing rentable lists. New movers get their own place in the navigation, which is the tell for the kind of file this is. Somebody who's just changed address is worth more to a mailer than somebody who hasn't, and that freshness is the product.
Its founder is named plainly, which is more than most of this category manages. Peter Carney has spent over 35 years in direct marketing at Mal Dunn, Mail Marketing and Equifax, and left Equifax as national sales manager to open this business in Irvine.
The gap worth knowing about is the name. The company that files as a data broker is Guidestar Direct, Corp., and that string appears on none of the pages you'd use, not the homepage, not About, not the privacy policy, not the opt-out form. Carney Direct Marketing is the d/b/a. The registry row connects the two without difficulty, but a search for one name won't obviously lead you to the other.
It says it's registered in more than one state. Carney Direct's privacy policy states that it's a data broker under California, Connecticut, Vermont and Texas law and must register in each. Only the California filing has been checked here, but a company that registers anywhere is one the statutory route actually reaches, which is more than brokers that register nowhere can say.
Data Published
Data types
Carney Direct publishes nothing about you. It sells access to files, which is a different exposure. Your record moves to whoever rents the list and you never see the transaction. Its privacy policy says the marketing file holds names, addresses, emails and dates of birth bought from data compilers, aggregators and partners, plus public and census data. These are the products the site advertises.
Rented mailing and marketing lists, browsable as datacards
New-mover files, sold on the freshness of a recent address change
Data append and enrichment against a client's existing customer file
Analytics, modelling, and profiling of client data
Data monetization, which is the service of helping a client sell its own customer data
Acquisition and prospecting campaigns across channels
Re-engagement and retention targeting of lapsed customers
Append is the part people miss. Enrichment works by taking a client's partial record about you and filling in what the client doesn't have. So the useful question isn't only what Carney Direct holds, but what it can add to somebody else's file about you, which is why getting out of the marketing database matters more than getting out of any one rented list.
Contact
Contacts & links
- Legal entity
Guidestar Direct, Corp. · d/b/a Carney Direct Marketing
- Postal address
Carney Direct Marketing Attn: Privacy Officer 10 Hughes, Suite A201 Irvine, CA 92618
- Privacy and opt-out email
- Shine the Light requests
info@carneydirect.com · Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.83
- Toll-free
- Rights form
Key links
Two addresses, two purposes. privacy@ is the one the privacy policy names for every rights request and for getting out of the marketing databases. info@ is named for California Shine the Light disclosure requests, which ask what was shared and with whom, and for complaints that the policy isn't being followed. Send a removal request to privacy@.
Reputation
Trust signals
There's very little independent record here, which is normal for a business whose customers are other businesses. Nobody buys anything from Carney Direct except marketers, so nobody comes away annoyed enough to review it.
Its own numbers are the most interesting record it has. Carney Direct's privacy policy carries a metrics table for calendar 2025 showing 309,598 California deletion requests received and 309,598 complied with, at an average of 6.63 days, with requests to know and requests to opt out both at zero. Its 2024 registry filing reads differently. It reports 400,410 requests to delete and 400,410 requests to opt out of sale or sharing, identical figures, all complied with, at 11 days mean and median. One year the two columns match to the request; the next, one of them is zero. Neither document explains how requests are categorised, and the site's removal page leads with a global opt-out checkbox.
FAQ
Q & A
Can I look myself up on Carney Direct?
No, and that's worth understanding before you start. There's no consumer search, no record page and no report. It's a list business selling to marketers, so you can't confirm you're in the file before you ask to leave it, and you can't confirm you're gone afterwards. That asymmetry is normal for this category and it's the main reason to keep your own copy of anything you send.
Who is Guidestar Direct?
The same company. Guidestar Direct, Corp. is the legal entity on the California registry and Carney Direct Marketing is the DBA on the same row. The website is entirely in the Carney name and never mentions the other. If you're citing a registry entry in a complaint, use Guidestar Direct, Corp.; if you're writing to the company, use Carney Direct.
Does the opt-out form take me off their mailing lists?
Not on its own, and this is the single most important thing on this page. The on-site form collects a name and an email address. The privacy policy separately says that to get out of the marketing products and services databases you email privacy@carneydirect.com with your full name, mailing address, email address and telephone number. A direct-mail file is keyed to a postal address, and the form never asks for one. Do both.
I don't live in one of the states they list. Will they help me?
They don't say, and the form gives you no way to tell them where you live. The opt-out page frames everything around residents of twenty named states with privacy statutes, and the form's only region field is a hidden one fixed to us. Nothing there promises anything to someone in the other thirty. The email route is the better one if you're outside the list, because an email lets you say where you live and what you're asking for in your own words.
Why does their report show zero opt-out requests?
We don't know, and we're not going to invent a reason. The 2025 table on the privacy policy records zero requests to opt out and 309,598 requests to delete, complied with in full. The 2024 registry filing records 400,410 of each, the same number in both columns. The removal page's first and most prominent checkbox is a global opt-out from selling and sharing. Neither the table nor the filing nor the page explains how a request gets counted.
Take yourself off data broker sites
Redact scans 120+ data broker sites from your device, finds where your details are listed, and submits the removal requests for you. If a broker relists you, it files again.
August 18, 2026 · Opt-out page walked firsthand, then re-read in its served HTML to recover the fields the rendered page doesn't show. Company detail from Carney Direct's About and privacy pages, its published metrics table, its BBB listing and the California data-broker registry. September 10, 2026 · Every claim re-read live. The registry row still names Guidestar Direct, Corp. with Carney Direct Marketing as its DBA and reports 400,410 deletion requests for 2024, all complied with, at 11 days mean and median; the same filing records 400,410 opt-out requests, which this page hadn't said before. The site's metrics table now states it covers calendar 2025, so the 309,598 and 400,410 figures are different years rather than a contradiction. BBB read live the same day.