Company data check websites that make you Googleable

[Peoplesoft bloke]

If you are that bothered about this, then can't you put your Accountants address down instead?

I did/do - those company director check S are still publishing my address - I wonder if they are a limited co......with directors.....

[ChrisPackit]

If you are that bothered about this, then can't you put your Accountants address down instead?

[NadJ]

From the Companies House website:
Terms and Conditions


Acceptable use of Companies House Searchable Databases

The Companies House searchable databases are designed to meet the needs of a wide range of users wishing to interrogate our information on-line.

Due to limitations of equipment and bandwidth, they are not intended to be a source for bulk downloads.

Individuals, companies, IP addresses or blocks of IP addresses who deny or degrade service to other users by generating unusually high numbers of daily database accesses, whether generated manually or in an automated fashion, may be denied access to these services without notice.

So what is that to imply that the likes of Company Director Check UK are not abiding by the acceptable use policy?

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

The option has existed for the laser few years to give a "Service address" instead of home; home is still given to CH but not published.

IMV 192.com are more intrusive.

[Gentile]

Change your name to "John Smith". Problem solved. Simples.

[NadJ]

Hi all,

First of all let me declare that I know the obvious... For a UK Ltd company, there is no hiding and a director's name address is public information. However, what I am challenging is the true meaning of "public". If something is public that shouldn't necessarily mean you can get to it by any means. This is sensitive data.

The likes of Company Director Check - free company director search and more are often the first web search results that appear when contractors like us have their names punched into Google. They claim they use WebCheck and their own APIs to download the data. WebCheck itself does not allow it's pages to be crawled by search engines but what makes absolutely no sense at all is why they allow their data to be scraped so easily only to then be used by profit making, company data selling companies who really do not give a damn if someone's home address is visible to anyone who punches in a name into Google!

There are hundreds of tools at the disposal of anyone wanting to research a company and who is behind it but giving nosey ones, the enemy or the scamster the ability to find out where a person lives so easily??? That is not fair for the majority of us who simply create a Ltd company as an income vehicle and TO PUT FOOD ON THE TABLE!

I'm aware that certain organisations (for example those hated by Animal Rights campaigners!) can have their addresses hidden if they fear violence etc but the form, the cost and the whole concept is a piss take and you need bloody documentary evidence or a police case ID! What I would like to see is to have Companies House implement measures which make data scraping a lot more difficult and as close to impossible as possible. They already do the right thing by not allowing web crawlers to come in but it totally defeats the purpose if you're going to allow repeated web requests from the same source IPs to sit on your firewall for hours collecting every record on your website! That is completely undoing the first measure of not allowing web crawlers to come in. The logic to detect web scraping is simple and can be implemented easily.

So, who agrees with me that Companies House ought to do more to prevent data scraping in order to protect sensitive information from falling so easily into the hands of the unscrupulous?