Hacker News Reader

Comment by ahaseeb | Hacker News Reader

Your suggestions are well taken. We should do a better job on the page however we're limited on what info to display & sources due to privacy laws and to prevent misuse

View on HN

So you can display the private information, but you can't display where it came from due to privacy laws? Can you cite which privacy laws protect the source of the publicly available information?

I doubt it’s privacy laws and more likely the terms of service from their data broker. The data broker probably doesn’t allow it and if they reveal the source, they will be cut off.

Their source must be cheap enough to do stuff like this so it probably rules out DataAxle, Elsevier and Oracle.

It seems to me like the data source would welcome the free advertising.

Not really since it's a wholesale arrangement and don't deal with retail

Having run a few background check websites where there was a data broker ... no they hate the attention. I got a visit from the FBI for using the name of their database ( we could show the results from the DB, but we could not use the name of it publicly) , which they updated on their website to say 'restricted' but did not email us or call us. This was early 2000's.

Why would the FBI be interested in a civil (contractual) violation between companies?

Edit: I said it wrong in the initial post the FBI visited for a different reason.

They thought I had 'hacked in'. My landlady at the time worked as a secretary at the FBI and misunderstood or did not know the data could be purchased legally through a third party, after I told her what I was doing at a dinner at their house which they invited me to.

I was extremely hung over when they came, I was 25, and did not at all believe they were agents I slammed the door on them (one of them had converse sneakers with their suits though). They slowly convinced me they were in fact legit, I showed them all the paperwork, and shut the site down due to caution. Gave me a good story to tell, ~2005.

At the moment data source is super expensive so we had to cap daily inquiries. We're not a data broker so have limitations around what can be displayed and what can't be. Hopefully, we're able to create an API that companies can integrate to help their clients be better at their number security

Even "we knows this because we bought a package of such & such data from Data Broker LLC" would be great.

We use a ton of sources. You can google data brokers and try some. But just because you find one and get them to remove the info, doesn't mean it is gone.

>we're limited on what info to display & sources due to privacy laws and to prevent misuse

Of course. We're not not allowed to know who sold our personal data to shady 3rd parties due to "privacy laws". Hilarious.

There are dozens of data brokers if not less and you can google for them. There are dozens of data removal companies too. It's probably a billion dollar industry trading your personal info. We're neither a data broker not a data removal. We're in business of securing Mobile numbers and our goal was to create awareness and help people make informed decision about their mobile number security.

We'll have to acquire different set of licenses if we ever have to step into these industries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com