1. They pay a CRA for a list of names that fit their specific criteria. Yes, this is possible and these are "promotional" soft pull lists. These are commonly used to generate mass mailings - the "you're invited to apply" letters more likely than actual pre-approvals, which are generally more personalized. Generally a person will never even know these pulls have been done unless they scour their reports looking for them.
2. They do a soft pull and can see the same info that you see when you do a soft pull of your own report. This is the type, again coded "promotional" until you put in a full application, that comes from visiting a lender's website and going through the pre-qualification process - Capital One, Amex, Discover, Citi, Chase, any of the others who offer "check for prequalified offers" on their sites do these. They are more personalized - in the sense that they just pull your individual informaion - but some lenders' sites look harder at it than others (some have the "anybody and their dog gets results" reputation, while others are considered reliable pre-qualifications). Once you actually apply, you will be subject to a hard pull - they will confirm your information and since it will be coded as a "hard offer of credit" it will be a hard pull.
In either case, anyone doing soft pulls ("promotional" when dealing with lenders or insurance companies doing prequalification, "account issuer" if your bank or lender is just watching over you, "background check" when dealing with leasing offices or employers, or "personal check" when checking your own credit, whether you intiate it or someone like myFICO or CreditKarma or whoever does it for you) has access to the entire scope of information listed above by the OP - accounts, lates, collections, age, etc. The list buyers probably don't use all of the above for parameters when they order a list, but soft pullers doing pre-qualifications likely will.
