Why all the junky "reverse lookup" sites?

[rootabaga]

It used to be there were a small handful of good, reliable and free reverse lookup websites for unknown telephone numbers.

Now those are gone, and in their place there are literally tens of thousands of junk sites that really are ad pages mostly with links to "paid" information providers and also typically of the "enter what you know about this number" ilk.

The curious thing to me is that the junk sites proliferate by the hundreds from month to month. But the question is...Why? They all offer the same junk and useless information. Is it that the older ones fail because they are useless so they just start with a new domain?

 

[dan330]

my guess..

there are only a few actual database of this info.. maybe 2 or 3.
they sell them to anyone.. to any site.

all these sites make money selling info.. with NO live people involvement... easy money.
so others see it.. and they make similar sites.. and so on .. and so on. it don't take much.

the free sites saw that the other sites are making money.. why not them?
so they are now charging...

 

[Gmash]

I'd say the junk sites are the equivalent of junk mail. You go to the site, see the ads and they get paid. Even if it's a fraction of a cent, they deal in volume, and the same person probably owns hundreds or thousands of the same to type of site. Free money for shady people, probably based in Russia or China.