As National Public Radio says
(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? StoryId=6074908) jigsaw.com, a "San Francisco data-mining business called Jigsaw Data is paying people to hand over the details of their Rolodexes, and then makes that information available on the Web to its customers. But the practice treads on what many consider basic business etiquette."
This company claims to be on "Online Directory of Business Contests" with "over 8 million complete contacts". And it is free. One either has to provide verification in the form of a credit card which unless one wants to use their "premium services" the card isn't suppose to be charged, or one has to have a non-generic email address (e.G. [email protected]).
Once you are registered, you then have the option of paying $5 per contact in groups of 5 @ $25 or you can supply to jigsaw.com contact that they do not have and that will give you points. You supposedly must have a non-generic type of email address for the subject (email addresses like yahoo.com, earthlink.com, hotmail.com, etc. Are not valid), the subject's full first name, the subject's title, company name, company address, and direct voice telephone number for the subject (not a cell phone number or home telephone number).
The idea supposedly is so that people can develop a giant list of contacts and "collaborate", but in reality it is a spammers dream, a fraudulent ripe off of credit card data where many times credit cards are charged for premium rates when no permission was given for the same, and even after many calls to the company are made and promises for the removal of the charges are given, the charges are not removed by the company except after threats of legal action including litigation and even criminal prosecutions!
The company says that the data can be uploaded manually in single incriments, or in groups up to 10,000 via their web site, or if one has a lot of data, via sending the data to the company and their will upload the data. However, in actual practice, the company makes all kinds of promises to upload the data only to delay loading up the data and finally to renege entirely loading the data!
In one glaring case, the data was never loaded at all. When the subject then tried to load the data himself, instead of rewarding the user with points, the company "shut him down" and kept the points with no explanation. He filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. When the company missed the deadline the BBB imposed and the BBB had threatened to remove the BBB certification, their in-house attorney, Mark S. Palmer filed an "attorney answer" we do not... Admit nor do we deny..." type of answer where the company merely stated that because this guy "threatened" litigation and the "tone" of his voice was "objectionable" that they felt that they didn't want to do business with the guy. However, at no point did they ever state that the guy provided defective data, or did something wrong!
In addition, the company in order to try to stimulate people to upload lots of data and to upload lots of data and to refer as many people as possible, it has set up a monthly "contests" where it offers 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes of $250, $100, and $50 in each categories to the winners. However, it is quite clear that these contests are fixed.in the above example, this same guy who during the month of February was told that if the data that he offered this company was received by February 25th that it would be loaded onto jigsaw.com's system "no later than February 29th". This statement was made in a digitally recorded coversation by a person by the name of "Dave" who stated that he was the person in charge of entering data into the system.
Records show that if jigsaw.com did enter the data into its system, that there would be no question that this man would have won the February contest for the most amount of data. The next month, March he again tried to enter the data manually but again was shut down. Once again, he would have won that month's contest.
In addition, he updated a very large number of jigsaw.com contacts that already were in the system. The extremely large number of contacts that existed that were so inaccurate suggests that less than 1/3 of the contacts that were examined were accurate. For example, major companies such as Xerox were listed at an address that was not their corporate headquarters. Xerox was listed at an address in Stamford Connecticut when of course their corporate headquarters is located in Norwalk Connecticut.
Jigsaw has a system where if a user feels that a contact that exists in their system is wrong, that a user can update the contact for points. This in and of itself breeds "data wars" where two or more users will each make claim to a particular contact's "royality". Anyone purchasing a contact the "royality owner" gets 1 point. So naturally, people will scour the database and try to own as many contacts as possible. While their appears to be some sort of referree system, it is quite clear that these referrees are poorly trained. Many examples from different users were produced which show that despite verifications from even governmental agency web sites showing for example that a corporation does business under an assumed name (or that a corporation owned another corporation etc.) jigsaw's internal checkers not only refused the update, but penalized the updater!
Jigsaw.com is a spammer's paradise. Once a spammer has earned a sufficient amount of points, he/she/it can purchase more and more emails to spam more people. Using this same technique, one can amass a tremendously large email list. At the same time, one can obtain in some cases direct telephone numbers of high-ranking staffers to major companies. Suppose if you will that you give out your direct telephone number to certain individuals. One of those so-called trusted individuals gives out your number to jigsaw.com. Then your number gets "published" to the world and suddenly your so-called "unlisted" direct office telephone number lights up like a Christmas Tree! Worse yet, suppose the person that sends your information to jigsaw.com decides to use your cell phone telephone number instead of your direct voice telephone number that your confidential secretary uses. Suddenly, your so-called private life becomes public for any Tom Dick or Harry to call you on your cell phone.
Although there are ways Jigsaw could easy determine which prefixes of telephone numbers are cell phone numbers to automatically detect cell phones from landlines, it has chosen not to do so for whatever reason. {Anyone for any reason can take any telephone number in the USA and Canada and for that matter almost anyplace on earth and determine the name of the company and whether or not it is a landline or wireless carrier simply by going to one of many web site such as but not limited to http://www.fonefinder.net/index.php? Ripa=&nxx= }.
Jigsaw also has chosen not to try to use both the physical and the mailing addresses for its listings. For example, many companies use a post office box as the primary address where they get their mail, but of course they cannot be located physically at their post office address. The USPS therefore permits a company to use:
123 Main St
PO Box 123
Anytown NY 12345-0123
This permits the post office to deliver to the last line just above the city state and zip code which is the post office box, but still permits a mailer to have as part of its address file the physical address. Once again, jigsaw has caused "data wars" with its users where one user will use the physical address, another the post office box and still anothe will use both. Jigsaw doesn't seem to care, until one user, like the one who filed a complaint with the BBB causes a stir sufficient to where rather than deal with the situation to put it to rest the company decides to brand the person as a "trouble maker", penalize the user, and ban the person from its entire system while at the same time cheating the person out of his/her royalities and points!
Even noted experts like Michael Arrington founder of www.techcrunch.com
Http://www.techcrunch.com/03/23/jigsaw-is-a-really-really-bad-idea/
http://www.techcrunch.com/04/10/jigsaw-raises-12-million/
Say that jigsaw.com should be outlawed!
In yet another horror story jigsaw admitted that an employee of AT&T sent jigsaw employee AT&T employee insider information to it which jigsaw somehow caught and allegedly removed. Jigsaw doesn't say how it can somehow catch anyone else from doing this same thing since its subscribers are allowed to not disclose to other subscribers who they are and/or to have some internal mechanism as to the source of where jigsaw's sources get their data.
See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article. Cgi? F=/c/a/09/05/BUG1EKU7LD1. DTL
It should be noted that this company's actual data operations are located in Idaho.
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