They do a disservice to the party who's contact info they sell
My 14 year old son was receiving solicitations in his email addressed to my first and last name. Most were offers for conventions, seminars, surveys, business propositions, job postings, as well as scammers, and “Asian dating” site ads. The parties all thought I worked for an employer that I had never heard of and that I lived in a different city.
I started emailing the parties back, asking how is it that they obtained my son’s email. Some told me that they saw my profile on LinkedIn, and they used the Anyleads browser plug in to obtain my email and build a profile.
One of them sent me a link. The link pointed to a LinkedIn account belonging to someone with my same name, but he worked for a different company and lived in a different city (My name is very common so there are dozens of LinkedIn profiles belonging to men with my same name).
Anyleads evidently carelessly matched my son’s email with the profile. I understand that this happens a lot, because my friend experienced the same thing when his 12 year old daughter’s email was mistakenly associated with his LinkedIn profile.
It seems obvious to me that Anyleads obtains the emails from dubious sellers on the dark web.
Anyleads was happy to remove my profile without hesitation. I am happy for that. My beef with them, is they should have obtained my permission before selling what they thought was my email addresses to anyone who is willing to pay for a monthly subscription. Also the damage is already done; now scammers have my son's email so he will have to change it.
Also know that Anyleads does not qualify the parties to subscribe to its service. Some of the parties are re-selling the information to foreign scammers such as those that advertise “Asian dating” or try to solicit me (my son) to invest in dubious companies.