In the earliest days of my internet experience, I remember being able to do a web search for a phone number and sometimes actually find something useful. That said, this niche has long been dominated by some of the fakest, most scammy, bullshit sites on the web. From calling themselves “free” when they are not, to the fake “searching”, “sifting through results”, “correlating records” wait screens that are much like the deceptive, manipulative, and nontransparent airline industry, to the mentally manipulative exclamation point in the red warning triangle to tease you that there might be criminal records.
Why is this area of the web so scammy?
Who made it like this?
Has anyone tried to fix it?
Is there a any site out there that can actually do a reverse lookup and isn’t a cesspool of popups, pay gates, and fake loading screens?
They got monetized by corporations, just like so many other specialized information sources.
Like you, I remember earlier days on the web where you could find all sorts of stuff for free, if you knew how to search. That included reverse phone number searches, finding people online, etc. Now it’s all trapped behind paywalls. I get that maintaining it costs money. But it’s still a bit disheartening. I guess the silver lining is that it makes it a bit harder for people’s sensitive information to be accessible to everyone (unless they pay for it, of course).
Another information category that’s gone down this route is genealogy information. Most of the good stuff there’s is being held hostage by ancestry.com and similar sites. And most online newspapers now hide their articles behind paywalls of one kind or another (there are ways around them usually, but it’s still a hassle).
They make that money by selling data.