Three-quarters of House members are exposed to security risks with their personal information available online through search engines that collect and sell data such as addresses, phone numbers and property records, according to a new analysis.

The data privacy company Incogni searched dozens of “people search sites,” which compile and sell detailed profiles of individuals containing personal data, to see what results popped up for the 437 members of the House of Representatives, including nonvoting delegates and excluding three vacant seats.

It found 329 House members with personal data available for purchase online. The number could be even greater because Incogni only counted members whose results it could verify were at least 75% accurate.

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“I’m surprised with how polarized things are in Congress that so few people in Congress have done anything to protect their privacy,” Ron Zayas, CEO of the Incogni division that sells data protection services to businesses and government officials, told The Washington Times. 

A small portion of the lawmakers who did not have personal data come up in the results are already Incogni customers. While Mr. Zayas acknowledges the analysis could help him acquire more business, he said the main goal is to raise awareness and promote the need for data privacy laws that protect not only members of Congress but the general public.

“Our point is that people should own their own data. You should have the right to decide whether or not somebody can sell your data,” he said. “And that doesn’t always match up with our business interests, but that’s what we advocate for.”

Incogni used public information available on the lawmakers — full names, dates of birth and, in some cases, their current city of residence — to conduct the searches for its analysis. 

The party breakdown of the at-risk lawmakers — 171 Republicans and 158 Democrats — is proportionally close to the overall split of the GOP-controlled House. 

However, adding gender into the mix, House Republican women were the least exposed, with data found for 62% of GOP women compared to 80% for GOP men. House Democrats fell in between both GOP groups, with data found for 74% of men and to 73% of women in the caucus.

That gender data largely tracks with Mr. Zayas’ experience. His business and government division of Incogni has more women clients than men, roughly 55% to 45%. 

“I think women are much more threatened in our society than men tend to be,” Mr. Zayas said, noting they are more likely to be victims of domestic violence or targets of dating revenge plots in addition to receiving work-based threats. 

“Even at the judicial level, at the government level, when a woman does something — and especially a woman of color does something — they tend to get a lot more flack and a lot more attacks and a lot more misogyny than anybody else does, you know, than a comparable male would in the same position,” he said. “So I think they’re much more sensitive about protecting their information.” 

The data available on each search site varies. Some provide little more than names, ages, addresses and phone numbers, while others include more detailed background information like relatives, business associates, property values and criminal and other court records.

“It doesn’t take much imagination to see the risk in data points like these being publicly available, for anyone, much less high-profile, often-polarizing figures like congressional representatives,” the Incogni report said. “Many of these data points are part of the public record, but it’s the way people search sites make them quick and easy to find that’s concerning.”

The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump last month only heightened concerns about politicians’ safety as the November elections approach. 

Lawmakers have received an increasing number of threats in recent years as political violence in the U.S. is on the rise. 

In 2023, the U.S. Capitol Police investigated 8,008 threats against members of Congress, up from 7,501 in 2022.

Last year’s threat cases were down from the 9,625 Capitol Police investigated in 2021 and 8,613 in 2020 — years in which some lawmakers were pressured to overturn the 2020 election results — but still significantly higher than the 6,955 cases investigated in 2019 and 5,206 in 2018.

While many of the cases the Capitol Police investigates are threats made in calls and emails to members’ official offices or posted publicly on social media accounts, some come through more personal contacts.

Some lawmakers and their families have been harassed at their homes. One of the more infamous cases is the 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at their San Francisco home. The attacker, who has since been convicted, was looking for Ms. Pelosi but she was not home at the time.

“When we talk to politicians, there’s usually not an awareness of how much of their information is out there. So doing reports like this and showing it is a good way to give people a wake-up call to how easy it is to find where they live,” Mr. Zayas said. “Most people don’t understand that until something bad has happened.”

While most people search sites provide disclaimers warning customers against using the information purchased for illegal activity, there are generally no safeguards to protect against bad actors, the Incogni report said.

Some states such as Texas and California have data privacy laws that protect House members’ home addresses and personal information from public disclosure. But most of those laws operate on an opt-out basis, requiring lawmakers to proactively request their information be removed.

Despite the Texas law, Incogni found data for 89% of the state’s U.S. representatives.

In every single state, Incogni found at least one House member whose data was exposed. It found 22 states and U.S. territories where the entire House delegation had data available for purchase online, including Georgia, Michigan, Tennessee and Oregon.

Only in five states were 50% or fewer of the representatives’ data exposed: Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Minnesota and Washington.