4 ms·

I don't know anything about Spokeo, but Rapleaf uses the APIs of various services, and when that isn't enough, they screen scrape.

• orblivion 16y ago
  > Rapleaf uses the APIs of various services Those APIs expose people's email addresses?
  • maxawaytoolong 16y ago
    Yes. If you already know someone's email address, you can get all sorts of information about them from twitter, fB, amazon wishlists...anything where the user's account is keyed to an email address.
    • orblivion 16y ago
      So... isn't there something in user agreements that avoids this sort of thing? Maybe I should read it closer, but I would expect "will not sell my email address to third parties" would be a common clause. And if it wasn't, I'd expect some sort of consumer backlash. Sorry for the line of questions, this is sortof a jolt to my view of reality.
      • maxawaytoolong 16y ago
        They aren't selling the email address to third parties - they are letting them access the information for free.