Zabasearch.com

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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. The company claims that all of the information accessible on the site is/was already extant 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.^[1]

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.^[2]