Selling Email Addresses Found on the Internet

[tt_m_finance]

What is the name of your state? California.

Hi, can anybody help me out with this:

Is it allowed to search email addresses of corporate employees (plus the company's physical address) through search engines and to sell this information to companies and individuals as business leads without their consent?

I'd highly appreciate any information. Thank you.

 

[BelizeBreeze]

What is the name of your state? California.

Hi, can anybody help me out with this:

Is it allowed to search email addresses of corporate employees (plus the company's physical address) through search engines and to sell this information to companies and individuals as business leads without their consent?

I'd highly appreciate any information. Thank you.

It's called pfishing. Look it up.

 

[Zigner]

I think BB misunderstood the question. I don't think OP is going to try to convince/trick the employees of said company to give out their information.

 

[BelizeBreeze]

I think BB misunderstood the question. I don't think OP is going to try to convince/trick the employees of said company to give out their information.

It doesn't matter....Not to the feds

 

[Zigner]

It doesn't matter....Not to the feds

Compiling and selling publically available information is illegal?

 

[steveatx]

To the OP: Pfishing (actually spelled "phishing") involves attempting to fraudulently acquire information such as passwords or credit card numbers, not selling e-mail addresses as "business leads" in case you were concerned. As for the legality of what you are trying to do, which is unrelated to phishing, I think Zigner is on the right track.

 

[divgradcurl]

I agree with Zigner -- there is nothing illegal about compiling and selling publicly-available information. However, remember that just because it appears somewhere on the internet does not guarantee that it is publicaly available, and there are laws against identity theft which limit the amount of information about an individual you can have at one single place. However, if you are just getting names, titles, email addresses, business address and phone numbers, you'll be okay.