system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why is Carfax, a commercially owned company, allowed to collect all kinds of information on our cars, and sell it to others for money?

The more I'm researching the company, the stranger this seems. Apparently mistakes are common, and hard to get fixed, yet they severely affect the value of your vehicle. They get this information from insurance companies, from *police*, but also for example from oil change companies that will report your mileage to them. How is this allowed? It's not like I signed up with Facebook and they then sell my info. I never made any agreement with Carfax. Where did we give permission for this extensive reporting?

I ask, because I'm selling a car, and the buyers just emailed me this morning to say that the Carfax report lists my car as having been totaled in Florida last year. Not only has my car never been in an accident at all, my car hasn't even been in Florida (it's registered in OREGON), and I'm the only owner.

I can't believe that an idiotic mistake by a company I want nothing to do with, and that I never authorized to collect my information, has now reduced the value of my three year old car to virtually nothing, until they fix it. IF they fix it. They don't even have a phone number listed. How can all this be legal? Why isn't this kind of service run by the DMV?
gpt
Every bit of information that is on Carfax is either:

1) Not information that qualifies for privacy protection

2) Information that is already public - this includes police records

3) **Information that, somewhere down the line, you agreed to allow another company to sell**, likely in a very long sale contract, online agreement, or other similar instrument. 

That's how they do it.

Source: IP attorney.