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Your Business Contacts Are Selling Your Data--Legally

Posted on Sep 28, 2006 by Tom Fragala

There is a new type of company that you might not be aware of. These companies are called business contact marketplaces. It is very different from the data brokers than maintain and sell your personal information. They are unabashedly proud of their business model: they pay anyone a fee to upload all their business contacts. Then they go ahead and resell that information to anyone that wants it. Two companies I am aware of are Jigsaw and Leadpoint.

Seriously, your salesman, partner, co-worker, guy you met on a plane, whomever, might have already uploaded your contact info. One of these companies, Jigsaw, will pay you $1 for each contact. Doesn't sound like much? Well, I have around 900 contacts in my Outlook file. That would buy me 3-4 iPods. (No, I am not going to sell your data, don't worry). Do you think I am over-hyping this? Well, Jigsaw has raised over $12 million from big name venture capital firms and already has 3 million people's data.

Is this identity theft. No, I don't think it is, as current laws are written. Especially since we are talking about BUSINESS information. Virtually all our ID theft and related laws exist primarily to protect consmers. Businesses are often considered the bad guys, so most consumer advocates don't care about them. But I thought you should be aware. And by all means, go to Jigsaw and look up your name. You may be shocked to see your business card in there; or a friend's. I did a search and found my brother, and two cousins in there--with up to date, detailed contact information.

Is this dangerous? I think it is the dream scenario for a hacker that uses "social engineering." And let's say you meet a creep in a bar and all he has is your name. He goes to Jigsaw and in a few seconds knows where exactly where you work and your phone number--and there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot remove your data. TechCrunch (number 1 blog in the world) calls it "evil."

What do you think?

Update: Jigsaw has detailed contact information for sixty-four people at the FBI, including a Deputy Director, a Section Chief, Chief of Staff, Chief of Training, Chief of Fiscal Resources, a Senior Executive (at Quantico), and someone called a "BN Signal Officer/S-6." Underworld operatives and terror groups must be loving this. Oh, and there are 1,067 people with "Chief of Police" in their title. Shall I go on?

Update 2: Wow. There are THIRTY-ONE people who work for a district attorney, just in California alone. I wonder if Tom Sneddon, Santa Barbara DA, would be interested to know that someone codenamed "squirt" sold his contact information to Jigsaw on 12/09/05.

Update 3: I left out this important item. You can get data from Jigsaw for nothing. There's no barrier to entry. You get a free trial with 25 credits (5 contacts), and you get to view 2 contacts for every 1 you upload.