Show HN: ContactOut – Find Anyone's Email and Phone#

I know this is just using what's publicly available but I do feel mildly creeped out. But since I'm not the target market that's probably an endorsement.

This just looks like the same address-scraping that spammers have been using since the 90s, plus some half-assed attempt to link them to real names. People who want to be contacted will make it easy to do so; those who don&#x27;t, won&#x27;t.<p>Are you actually proud of having created this thing?

Can you tell us a bit about how it works? Or what has changed over the last year since you first deployed it?

Nice app and website, but I don&#x27;t see the benefit of using a Chrome extension versus a normal browser web app. I understand that you can use it to find the phone number of a person on your current webpage, but I think it should be secondary to the web app.<p>Especially since you&#x27;re targeting business users, you should create a polished webapp for them.<p>Also, I think many HN users would agree with me on the issue of privacy. In order to use the extension, I need to grant it permission to read and write data on all websites that I visit. Not saying you&#x27;re evil, but this means (in theory) you could sell by browsing history, my interests, or even my data (again, not talking about you, but in general).

Wow, that&#x27;s super creepy<p>This looks like dream tool for stalkers

Where is the opt-out?

I just tried 3 random contacts using a premium account, no dice on the email or phone number.

Its a bit scary, but totally useful. I tested it with people I know, and looks like people who use different emails for fb&#x2F;linkedin tend not to have as much info available. But the number of mobile phones you have on there is crazy.

lol much controversy