192.com

Last updated
192.com Ltd.
Type Private limited company
IndustryDirectory
GenreDirectory
PredecessoriCD publishing
FoundedLondon (1997)
FounderAlastair Crawford
FateOperating
Headquarters London, England, UK
Area served
United Kingdom
Key people
Managing Director - Keith Marsden; Bryan Foley - Financial Director; Dominic Blackburn - Product Director.
ProductsPeople search, Business directory, Property Prices, Maps
471787
OwnerAlastair Crawford, majority shareholder & other investors
Number of employees
35 [1]
Website www.192.com

192.com is a British company that publishes an online directory as well as information contained within the public domain for the United Kingdom, based in London, England.

Contents

The company provides online directory enquiries and competes with BT, Google Local, Yelp and the Yell Group (the holding company now known as hibu, as of 2012 [2] ) for the directory enquiry market. It is the market leader DQ for finding people. [3]

192.com contains approximately 700 million residential and business records. Of these records, 200 million come from the 2002-2017 edited Electoral Rolls, though some of these are duplicate records. 28 million people were on the edited Electoral Roll in 2015. 192.com's other records come from Companies House Director Reports, the Land Registry, and Births Deaths and Marriages Data for England and Wales. 192.com also publishes a directory of UK businesses, providing company credit reports, financial statements, employee numbers, current and previous directors, web mentions and county court judgements. Registered users can also add details to any business listings using User Generated Content of non-limited companies in addition to limited companies.

History

Founded in 1997 by Alastair Crawford, 192.com Limited evolved from a CD-ROM product called UK Info Disk, [4] the best selling non-game CD-ROM product of its time. 192.com publishes the Edited Electoral Roll in electronic media; previously the roll had been available for consultation only in public libraries and town halls. The company offered an alternative to British Telecom's previous monopoly of telephone directory enquiries. There were a number of lawsuits related to this online challenge.

During the dotcom bubble in 2001 [5] icd publishing was valued at £100 million.

In February 2011 icd publishing Ltd split in half; the two units were named 192.com Ltd and 192business Ltd. On 1 March 2012, half of the company 192business Ltd was sold to Experian Plc [6] for an undisclosed sum, though the gross value of the assets was £9 million. [7]

Products

In 2010, 192.com Limited launched i192, an app for iPhones supplying free directory enquiries and 192.com's business and residential listings for mobile web users. However, some users found the app difficult to use.

In 2012, the company released a new product, 'See Who's Looking for You'.

In 2013, the company released a new product, 'Background Reports', which includes edited electoral roll information, any county court judgements, mortality data, land registry details and an insolvency report.

Reunions

The company has helped reunite missing family and friends - for example, the Salvation Army use 192.com to reunite an estimated 3,000 families each year. However, in September 2011, 192.com's competitor Tracesmart won the Salvation Army account. [8] In 2010 it featured in the BBC 1 series Trackers as a tool for tracing lost family and forgotten financial assets.

Customer concerns

The Review Centre has over 140 reviews with an average rating of one star. [9] The main complaint is lack of transparency as to what data is available for specific records. Other complaints include paid credits being used during searches that would be free if not logged in, poor customer service and credits expiring within 30 days if not used.

Privacy concerns

Some people find the depth of detail an invasion of privacy, with information being seen using search engines. [10] [11] [12] These have the option of deleting their details. There is an opt-out on the electoral roll registration papers, or on 192.com's website by filling out a 'C01' form which can be downloaded and sent online. 192.com is licensed and regulated by the Data Protection Act 2018.

Literature

192.com is mentioned in Dick Francis's novel Shattered where the protagonist uses 192.com to trace a missing person.

192.com is mentioned in Robert Galbraith’s novel The Ink Black Heart where the website is used several times to check addresses of facilities.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adobe Inc.</span> American multinational software company

Adobe Inc., originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the creation and publication of a wide range of content, including graphics, photography, illustration, animation, multimedia/video, motion pictures, and print. Its flagship products include Adobe Photoshop image editing software; Adobe Illustrator vector-based illustration software; Adobe Acrobat Reader and the Portable Document Format (PDF); and a host of tools primarily for audio-visual content creation, editing and publishing. Adobe offered a bundled solution of its products named Adobe Creative Suite, which evolved into a subscription software as a service (SaaS) offering named Adobe Creative Cloud. The company also expanded into digital marketing software and in 2021 was considered one of the top global leaders in Customer Experience Management (CXM).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Experian</span> Irish multinational consumer credit reporting company

Experian is a multinational data analytics and consumer credit reporting company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Experian collects and aggregates information on over 1 billion people and businesses including 235 million individual U.S. consumers and more than 25 million U.S. businesses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yellow pages</span> Telephone directory of businesses by category

The yellow pages are telephone directories of businesses, organized by category rather than alphabetically by business name, in which advertising is sold. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for non-commercial listings. The traditional term "yellow pages" is now also applied to online directories of businesses.

TransUnion is an American consumer credit reporting agency. TransUnion collects and aggregates information on over one billion individual consumers in over thirty countries including "200 million files profiling nearly every credit-active consumer in the United States". Its customers include over 65,000 businesses. Based in Chicago, Illinois, TransUnion's 2014 revenue was US$1.3 billion. It is the smallest of the three largest credit agencies, along with Experian and Equifax.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friends Reunited</span> Portfolio of social networking websites

Friends Reunited was a portfolio of social networking websites based upon the themes of reunion with research, dating and job-hunting. The first and eponymous website was created by a husband-and-wife team in the classic back-bedroom Internet start-up; it was the first online social network to achieve prominence in Britain, and it weathered the dotcom bust.

A data broker is an individual or company that specializes in collecting personal data or data about companies, mostly from public records but sometimes sourced privately, and selling or licensing such information to third parties for a variety of uses. Sources, usually Internet-based since the 1990s, may include census and electoral roll records, social networking sites, court reports and purchase histories. The information from data brokers may be used in background checks used by employers and housing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hibu</span> Provider of web development and hosting

Hibu Inc., formerly Yellowbook Inc., is a provider of web development and hosting, digital listings and reputation management, search engine and social media marketing, and digital advertisements. Hibu is headquartered in Cedar Rapids, IA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">118 118 (UK)</span> Directory enquiries provider

118 118 is the UK telephone number for a US owned directory enquiries provider. Once wildly popular for its advertising featuring two runners, the service has experienced a dramatic decline in calls due to easily accessible information via mobile devices. Calls are answered from call centres in the Philippines, with some administration in Cardiff, Wales and other management offices in London that provides telephone numbers, given subscriber name and address, and answers general questions on any subject. 118 118 started operation in December 2002. In September 2013 the company started 118118Money, a provider of unsecured personal loans.

Alastair Crawford is CEO and founder of i-CD Publishing, the precursor to 192.com.

Megaupload Ltd was a Hong Kong–based online company established in 2005 that operated from 2005 to 2012 providing online services related to file storage and viewing.

A comparison shopping website, sometimes called a price comparison website, price analysis tool, comparison shopping agent, shopbot, aggregator or comparison shopping engine, is a vertical search engine that shoppers use to filter and compare products based on price, features, reviews and other criteria. Most comparison shopping sites aggregate product listings from many different retailers but do not directly sell products themselves, instead earning money from affiliate marketing agreements. In the United Kingdom, these services made between £780m and £950m in revenue in 2005. Hence, E-commerce accounted for an 18.2 percent share of total business turnover in the United Kingdom in 2012. Online sales already account for 13% of the total UK economy, and its expected to increase to 15% by 2017. There is a huge contribution of comparison shopping websites in the expansion of the current E-commerce industry.

An identity score is a system for detecting identity theft. Identity scores are increasingly being adopted as a means to prevent fraud in business and as a tool to verify and correct public records.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LifeLock (software)</span> American identity theft protection software

LifeLock Inc. is American identity theft prevention software, sold by Tempe, Arizona-based company Gen Digital Inc.. LifeLock's system monitors for identity theft, the use of personal information, and credit score changes.

Scoot is a United Kingdom business directory website. It was one of the highest profile casualties of the rise and fall of internet companies during the internet boom at the beginning of the 21st century falling from a value of £2.5 billion in 2000 to £5 million in 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seizure of Megaupload</span>

The seizure of Megaupload, a popular filesharing website with 150 million registered users, occurred on January 19, 2012, following a US indictment accusing Megaupload of harbouring millions of copyrighted files. According to the indictment, Megaupload was costing copyright holders over $500 million in lost revenues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mega (service)</span> Cloud storage and file hosting service

MEGA is a cloud storage and file hosting service offered by MEGA Limited, a company based in Auckland, New Zealand. The service is offered through web-based apps. MEGA mobile apps are also available for Android and iOS.

Tapad Inc. is a venture-funded startup company based in New York City that develops and markets software and services for cross-device advertising and content delivery. It uses algorithms to analyze internet and device data and predict whether two or more devices are owned by the same person. Participating websites and apps then cater their advertisements based on a collective knowledge of the user's actions across all of their devices.

Hunter Fraud Score is a rating score launched locally in India by Experian Credit information company of India (ECICI), to detect fraud in credit applications to banks and insurance companies and help them lower their losses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft 365</span> Subscription services offered by Microsoft

Microsoft 365 is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, programs formerly marketed under the name Microsoft Office, enterprise products and services associated with these products such as Exchange Server, SharePoint, and Yammer. It also covers subscription plans encompassing these products, including those that include subscription-based licenses to desktop and mobile software, and hosted email and intranet services.

References

  1. "ukdata.com/company/07180348/192.COM-LTD". February 2014.
  2. Gideon Spanier (2012-05-23). "Yell surprises with change of name to Hibu" . The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-05-01. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
  3. "192.com Site Info". Alexa.com. 2010-02-16. Archived from the original on 2010-03-27. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
  4. "(UK) - Home". i-CD Publishing. Archived from the original on 2013-07-24. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
  5. Beattie, Andrew. "Market Crashes: The Dotcom Crash". Investopedia. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
  6. "Experian completes acquisition of 192business". Experian.co.uk. Archived from the original on May 12, 2012. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
  7. "Experian buys fraud expert". City A.M. 2011-11-29. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
  8. Corner, Laurien (28 September 2011). "Tracesmart and the Salvation Army team up to help reunite families" (Press release). PRLog. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  9. "192.com Reviews". Review Centre. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  10. "28 posts on digitalspy.co.uk from 5-11-2010"
  11. "which.co.uk conversation 61 comments from 20 October 2011"
  12. "73 signatures from Oct 18, 2010 'Shutdown 192.com' petition on gopetition.com"

Further reading

“The electoral register and the ‘open register’” (https://www.gov.uk/electoral-register/overview) “Data protection” (https://www.gov.uk/data-protection/the-data-protection-act)