Show HN: ContactOut – Find Anyone's Email and Phone# (opens in new tab)

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't, won't.

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'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.

Especially since you're targeting business users, you should create a polished webapp for them.

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'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's super creepy

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/linkedin tend not to have as much info available. But the number of mobile phones you have on there is crazy.

lol much controversy