Anyone know of any good software to use to mine public information? such as business address and phone numbers. Info such as that?
Often large databases are protected to prevent these activities, because they are a large drain on the server resources, and also because the data is valuable. Usually the best way is buy the data, and there are a number of vendors the sell it. What some people also do is create spiders that are for mining a specific site. That can be expensive too, especially if the site has some protections built in.