The ZabaSearch.com People
Finder Search Engine
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Zabasearch.com
is a website that searches for and collates disparate information
regarding United States residents, including names, current and past
addresses, phone numbers, and birth years, and then permits the user
to query other search engines with this information to retrieve
other data such as satellite photos of addresses and criminal
background checks.
Zaba Search .com claims that all
of the information accessible on the site is/was already existant on
the Internet on many government or corporate databases the likes of
which could (usually) already be accessed piecemeal by the general
public. As such, they claim that the site fosters nothing new except
the convenience of gathering the data automatically and is not
suited for use by potential identity thieves. |
Zabasearch was founded by Nick
Matzorkis and Robert Zakari, and started offering database queries in
February 2005. The website allows free searches, but requests for more
information are directed to zabasearch's fee-based partners, including
Intelius. Zabasearch's founders claim that it overtook Yahoo People
Search as the highest traffic people search engine by May 2005.
The website allows consumers the option to be notified by email when
they, or people they know, are being searched and who is searching their
name or social security number. The website may also be accessed on the
Google toolbar.
The website also claims to track the number of phone lines and their
location (of all phone companies, such as Cingular) that call toll-free
numbers in the United States, including individual 866-IDOLS numbers
from the television show American Idol which it uses to make predictions
about the show. However, posts on the DialIdol forums during season 7
show that Zabasearch changes its predictions when actual Idol results
prove its earlier predictions wrong.
"ZabaSearch does not gather or generate information.
ZabaSearch quickly accesses public information and displays what
is available in the public domain. Many people assume ZabaSearch
controls the information found in ZabaSearch results pages.
However, ZabaSearch simply serves as a search engine in locating
available public records and does not create the records found.
Information typically makes it to the public domain via a wide
variety of sources, including but not limited to: phone
listings, court records, real property records, subscriptions
etc. Sources vary state by state and region by region. Unlike
ZabaSearch, there are many companies who do gather, generate,
compile, house and sell public information, most of which are
publicly traded. This practice is, and always has been, legal in
the United States and is the basis for the 2 billion dollar U.S.
information industry."
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