Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fraudulent telemarketers.
If an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same.
U.S. computer networks and databases are under daily cyber attack by nation states, international crime organizations, subnational groups, and individual hackers.
We get information in the mail, the regular postal mail, encrypted or not, vet it like a regular news organization, format it - which is sometimes something that's quite hard to do, when you're talking about giant databases of information - release it to the public and then defend ourselves against the inevitable legal and political attacks.
I thought a company that provides mutual-fund information could be a great business, because you could construct an effective moat by building large financial databases and customer lists and a strong brand name.