Comment by swores

I’m not sure why you read their question as being either surprised or disbelieving?

I’ve worked in marketing enough to know that all sorts of less-interesting data gets bought and sold, yet alone financial data, but even if limiting the context to “for marketing purposes” I wouldn’t know, and would be interested in being told, which companies actually are buying that sort of financial information.

And as the user has now explained in a comment further down the thread, they weren’t limiting their curiosity to just marketing profiling so there’s an even wider scope to their question.

But hey, easier to just call them naive than to give them the benefit of the doubt and engage constructively.