Broker profile

Epsilon

A B2B marketing data broker owned by Publicis Groupe, the French advertising holding company, since its $4.4 billion 2019 acquisition from Alliance Data Systems. Founded in 1969, Epsilon sells consumer identity, demographic, and behavioral data to advertisers and direct marketers, resolving roughly 200 million persons through its CORE ID platform. In 2021 it entered a $150 million DOJ Deferred Prosecution Agreement over a unit that sold lists to elder-fraud schemes.

Manual removal guide Visit epsilon.com

Epsilon overview

At a glance

Quick facts

Privacy Risk

LimitedModerateSubstantialExtensive

Data published: Moderate
Re-listing frequency: Occasional
Complaint record: Mixed
Opt-out friction: Moderate
Operator opacity: Fully disclosed
Prior data incidents: Confirmed breach

Each broker is scored 1 to 4 across the six dimensions above; higher means more exposure, and the overall gauge is their average.

A confirmed prior data leak holds the overall rating at Substantial or higher; a major or repeat breach forces Extensive, regardless of the other five dimensions.

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: Marketing data · identity resolution
Operating entity: Epsilon Data Management, LLC
Founded: 1969
Headquarters: Irving, TX
Parent: Publicis Groupe
CA data broker reg: ID 186453 · filing reports selling to a foreign actor in the past year
Marquee enforcement: DOJ $150M DPA
FCRA covered?: No

Background

Company history

Epsilon's product is enterprise marketing data, meaning consumer identity, demographics, purchase history, and behavioral signals licensed to advertisers, retailers, and direct-mail clients. The data underpins everything from programmatic ad targeting to printed catalog mailings. Epsilon's distinguishing scale is the CORE ID identity-resolution platform, which links roughly 200 million persons across devices, channels, and online/offline behavior. The historical direct-mail business is what landed Epsilon in the 2021 DOJ enforcement action - the modeled lists Epsilon sold to mass-mail clients included ones used by elder-fraud sweepstakes and astrology schemes.

Founded: 1969
Pre-Publicis parent: Alliance Data Systems Corp.
Acquired Conversant: December 2014
Publicis acquisition: July 1, 2019 · $4.4B
DOJ DPA: January 27, 2021 · $150M
CA broker registration: ID 186453

Epsilon was founded in 1969 as a direct-mail consulting firm. Alliance Data Systems Corporation acquired Epsilon in 2004 and built it into a marketing-data and loyalty-program conglomerate through subsequent acquisitions, most notably Conversant in December 2014 - a programmatic display advertising platform that brought cross-device identity technology (later rebranded as the PeopleCloud Digital Media Solutions product and a foundation of CORE ID). In April 2019, Alliance Data announced it would sell Epsilon to Publicis Groupe; the deal closed July 1, 2019 for $4.4 billion in cash.

Under Publicis ownership Epsilon is housed within the Publicis Connected Media ecosystem alongside Publicis Media.

Epsilon is a different kind of "data broker" than the people-search brokers in this directory. Like Acxiom (Omnicom-owned) and ZoomInfo (B2B contact data), Epsilon doesn't run a consumer- facing search page; the data lives in enterprise client dashboards, programmatic ad platforms, and direct-mail merge files. The privacy concern still maps. Your name, address, demographic profile, and purchase patterns are aggregated and sold to advertisers and direct marketers - including, historically, mass-mail operators charged with elder fraud.

The Publicis vs Omnicom duopoly. Following Omnicom's November 2025 acquisition of Interpublic Group (which made Acxiom an Omnicom property), the two largest US marketing data brokers are now each owned by a major advertising holding company - Epsilon by Publicis Groupe and Acxiom by Omnicom Group. This consolidation is the single biggest structural change in the marketing-data broker category in the last five years.

Data Published

Data types

Identity + demographic + behavioral

Full names, postal addresses, email addresses, phone numbers
Demographic data: age, gender, household composition, marital status, presence of children
Inferred income tiers and life-stage indicators
Purchase history (sourced from the Abacus retail data cooperative; ~1,800 participating retailers contributing transaction data in exchange for access)
Cross-device online behavioral data (CORE ID resolves ~200M persons across browsers, devices, and offline records)
Email engagement signals (open / click / unsubscribe behavior from Epsilon-managed email programs)
Direct-mail responsiveness scores (modeled likelihood that a household will respond to direct-mail solicitations)
Loyalty-program data (when client retailers operate their loyalty programs on Epsilon's platform)
Affiliate-marketing conversion data via Commission Junction (now CJ Affiliate, formerly part of Conversant)
Custom client audience segments built on the above signals (interest, intent, life-stage, persona)

How the data is sourced: A mix of (a) Epsilon-managed direct-mail and email programs run on behalf of retail clients, (b) the Abacus retail data cooperative where participating retailers contribute purchase histories in exchange for access to the pooled dataset, (c) Conversant's ad-network browsing and cross-device tracking (now PeopleCloud Digital Media Solutions), (d) Commission Junction affiliate-marketing conversions, and (e) third-party data partnerships. None of these data flows depend on individual consumer opt-in; the data accumulates downstream of normal retail, email, and web activity.

What the DOJ found in the 2021 case. Per the DOJ press release, from July 2008 through July 2017 employees in Epsilon's Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Unit "knowingly sold modeled lists of consumers to clients engaged in fraud" - specifically, mass-mail sweepstakes and astrology solicitations targeting recipients who had paid prior fraudulent mailers. The schemes "disproportionately affected the elderly and other vulnerable individuals." The case is one of the largest enforcement actions against a marketing data broker on record and a structural data point for how the modeled-responsiveness product can be misused.

Contact

Contacts & links

Epsilon Data Management, LLC

Operating entity: Epsilon Data Management, LLC
Operational HQ: 6021 Connection Drive Irving, TX 75039 (469) 262-0600
Legal entity address: 11030 Circle Point Road, Suite 110 Westminster, CO 80020
Privacy email: privacy@epsilon.com
Data Subject Request webform: legal.epsilon.com/dsr
Opt-out toll-free line: 1 (866) 267-3861
Privacy policy: legal.epsilon.com/us/NA-products-privacy-policy
CA data broker registration: Epsilon Data Management, LLC · 2024: 4,985 requests to delete - 2,691 complied in whole, 2,294 denied, two-day median · the filing also reports selling consumer data to a foreign actor in the past year - cppa.ca.gov/data_broker_registry/
DOJ DPA case page: justice.gov/civil/case/epsilon
General website: https://www.epsilon.com/

Network

Sister brands

Publicis · Conversant · Abacus

Epsilon sits inside Publicis Connected Media alongside Publicis Media. The Epsilon brand itself comprises several product lines, the most notable being the former Conversant (programmatic display) and Abacus (retail data co-op) acquisitions.

Cross-category comparison: within this directory, Epsilon's closest analog is Acxiom - another massive marketing-data broker now owned by a major advertising holding company (Omnicom Group closed its IPG acquisition November 26, 2025). The two are now the Publicis-vs-Omnicom duopoly of US marketing data. Other B2B siblings in this directory are ZoomInfo (professional contact data), Foursquare (location intelligence), CoreLogic (property + mortgage data). All paywalled, enterprise-facing, not consumer-search products.

Epsilon operates as one corporate brand under Publicis - and now includes Lotame

Epsilon Data Management, LLC and the brands its North American privacy notice covers (Epsilon's own products such as PeopleCloud and Abacus, Yieldify, CitrusAd, Conversant, and Lotame since April 2, 2025) share unified DSR infrastructure. A single request submitted through legal.epsilon.com/dsr/ reaches all of these brands, though on Lotame's side it only covers data held in the Lotame Data Exchange Marketplace, per Lotame's Services Privacy Notice; data Lotame processes for a business customer needs a request to that customer. CJ Affiliate isn't named in that notice, so contact CJ directly for its data. Opting out of Epsilon does not extend to the broader Publicis Connected Media ecosystem outside Epsilon, and does not propagate to other marketing data brokers (Acxiom, LiveRamp, etc.) - those have separate opt-outs.

Owned or operated by Publicis Groupe3 entities in this network · Ad holding co (PUB)Explore the full map

Reputation

Trust signals

B2B-skewed · DOJ enforcement is the dominant signal

Epsilon is enterprise-facing, so consumer-review presence is thin - consumers rarely interact with Epsilon directly enough to leave reviews. The dominant reputational signal is the 2021 DOJ enforcement (see Litigation), not the consumer-review aggregators. The BBB rating below reflects the small number of consumer-side complaints, not the regulatory record.

Better Business BureauIrving, TX · not accredited · 2 complaints / 3yrA ratingAs of 2026-05Find on BBB ↗

Trustpilot - Epsilon Abacusepsilonabacus.com · 34 reviews1.4 / 5As of 2026-05View reviews ↗

Receiving unsolicited postal mail or email from Epsilon-managed client programs after a privacy / opt-out request
Targeted mailers referencing personal facts (vehicle ownership, recent home purchase, life events) without an apparent source consent
Difficulty connecting the mailers received to a specific data flow at Epsilon (BBB complaints note multi-week back-and-forth before Epsilon confirms a deletion)
The 2008-2017 DTC Unit conduct that drove the DOJ $150M DPA: modeled responsiveness lists sold to mass-mail elder-fraud operators
Cross-device tracking via Conversant / PeopleCloud Digital Media Solutions building advertising profiles independent of any Epsilon consumer-product signup

Common consumer-side complaint themes:

Litigation

Litigation history

$150M DOJ DPA · DTC executive convictions

The dominant enforcement event is the January 2021 Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. Two former Epsilon employees were also convicted and sentenced individually for their roles in the DTC Unit's conduct. No FTC enforcement, state Attorney General consent decree, or major private class action against the post-2017 Epsilon entity has been recorded as of the last-updated date.

United States v. Epsilon Data Management, LLC

Enforcement action

U.S. District Court, District of Colorado · Deferred Prosecution Agreement approved Jan 27, 2021 · DOJ Civil Division + U.S. Attorney D. Colo.

Settlement total: $150,000,000
Victim compensation: $127.5M
Charge: Conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud
Conduct period: July 2008 - July 2017
Unit at issue: Direct-to-Consumer Unit, Westminster, CO
Court approval: Jan 27, 2021

Per the DOJ press release, Epsilon's DTC Unit "knowingly sold modeled lists of consumers to clients engaged in fraud" - specifically, mass-mail clients who sent false sweepstakes and astrology solicitations claiming the recipient had won a large prize or qualified for an individualized psychic reading and could obtain it for a fee. The Epsilon employees knew the solicitations were fraudulent and that the lists they sold (which scored each household's likelihood of responding to prior fraudulent mailers) were used to maximize the schemes' reach. Many victims paid the fees and received nothing. The schemes "disproportionately affected the elderly and other vulnerable individuals." The settlement creates a $127.5M victim compensation fund and requires Epsilon to implement a compliance program; charges will be dismissed if Epsilon complies through the DPA term.

U.S. v. former Epsilon Senior Executive and Sales Manager

Enforcement action

D. Colo. criminal · individual convictions following Epsilon company-level DPA

Defendants: Former senior executive + sales manager
Outcome: Convicted; sentenced
Charge: Selling consumer data to mail-fraud perpetrators
Court: U.S. District Court, District of Colorado

Following the company-level DPA, the DOJ pursued individual prosecutions against the DTC Unit executive and a sales manager who oversaw the sale of modeled lists to mail-fraud operators. Both were convicted and sentenced. The individual prosecutions underscore that the DOJ treated the DTC Unit's conduct as criminal employee conduct rather than solely a corporate compliance failure.

Related and contextual matters:

No FTC enforcement against post-DPA Epsilon as of the last-updated date. The DOJ Consumer Protection Branch took the lead on the elder-fraud conduct rather than the FTC, which is unusual for a marketing-data broker case and reflects the criminal mail-fraud framing.
The 2011 email breach. In March 2011, while Epsilon belonged to Alliance Data Systems (now Bread Financial), a phishing attack on Epsilon itself exposed the email addresses of customers of at least 50 client companies, and Epsilon's executives were called before Congress that June. That breach is what the prior-data-incidents score on this page reflects.
Compliance posture under Publicis. Public statements from Publicis at the time of the DPA emphasized that the DTC Unit conduct predated the Publicis acquisition and that significant compliance changes had been made. The DPA term and conditions function as ongoing federal oversight.

FAQ

Q & A

Common questions

Is Epsilon a data broker?

Yes. Epsilon Data Management, LLC is one of the largest B2B marketing data brokers in the US, with registration ID 186453 on the California Data Broker Registry. It sells consumer identity, demographic, and behavioral data to advertisers, retailers, and direct-marketing clients through products including the CORE ID identity resolution platform (200M+ persons), Epsilon PeopleCloud, the Abacus retail data cooperative, and PeopleCloud Digital Media Solutions (formerly Conversant). Epsilon does not operate a consumer-facing search page.

Who owns Epsilon?

Epsilon has been owned by Publicis Groupe (Euronext Paris: PUB), the French advertising holding company, since July 1, 2019, when Publicis closed a $4.4 billion all-cash acquisition from Alliance Data Systems Corporation. Operational headquarters is at 6021 Connection Drive, Irving, Texas 75039; the Epsilon Data Management, LLC legal entity is registered at 11030 Circle Point Road, Suite 110, Westminster, Colorado 80020.

What information does Epsilon collect?

Epsilon collects and sells full names, postal addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, demographics (age, gender, income, household composition), purchase history (sourced cooperatively from the Abacus retail co-op), cross-device online behavioral data, and a wide range of modeled consumer segments (interests, life-stage indicators, response propensity). The CORE ID product resolves all of these signals to roughly 200 million persons in the US and Canada. Modeled lists of consumers identified as likely to respond to direct-mail solicitations were a central element of the 2021 DOJ enforcement action.

Can I remove myself from Epsilon?

Yes. Submit a Data Subject Request through legal.epsilon.com/dsr or call Epsilon's opt-out line at 1 (866) 267-3861. Epsilon recognizes browser-based opt-out signals including Global Privacy Control (GPC). CCPA / CPRA delete rights apply to California residents; similar rights apply in Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and a growing list of states. The privacy contact email is privacy@epsilon.com. See our Epsilon removal guide for step-by-step instructions.

How long does Epsilon take to process a removal?

Epsilon does not publish a specific processing SLA. As a California-registered data broker subject to CCPA / CPRA, it must act on an opt-out of sale or sharing within 15 business days and respond to verified deletion, access and correction requests within 45 days (extendable once to 90 with notice). The legal.epsilon.com/dsr webform issues a tracking confirmation; if you do not see a response within the statutory window, escalation goes through the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) data-broker complaint pipeline.

Is Epsilon covered by FCRA?

No. Epsilon is a marketing data broker, not a consumer reporting agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Its data is not FCRA-permissible for employment, tenant, credit, or insurance decisions. The applicable framework is CCPA / CPRA in California (Epsilon is on the state data-broker registry). In January 2021 the company entered a $150 million Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice for facilitating elder-fraud schemes through its Direct-to-Consumer Unit, which knowingly sold consumer lists to mass-mail fraud operations from 2008 through 2017.

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Last updated:

September 10, 2026