Court Orders Domain Transfer in Radaris Privacy Case
The consumer data broker Radaris.com has lost control of its primary domain and more than a dozen related websites following a court ruling in New Jersey that found the company violated Daniel's Law, a state statute designed to protect law enforcement officials, judges, and government personnel from having their personal information published by data brokers.
The lawsuit, filed by Atlas Data Privacy Corp in February 2024, alleged that Radaris repeatedly ignored removal requests for sensitive personal data despite being legally obligated to comply under Daniel's Law, which permits fines of $1,000 per violation. After months of legal delays and procedural maneuvers by Radaris attorneys, the judge entered a default judgment in favor of Atlas due to the company's failure to appear and defend the claims.
History of Evasion and Shell Company Tactics
Atlas CEO Matt Adkisson described Radaris's legal strategy as an "island-hopping phase," noting that the company repeatedly shifted ownership claims to entities in offshore jurisdictions like the Marshall Islands, British Virgin Islands, and Seychelles to avoid accountability. In one instance, when Radaris updated its terms of service to claim management by a Marshall Islands company, Atlas hired an investigator who confirmed the entity did not yet exist.
This pattern echoed a prior 2017 case where Radaris similarly avoided a domain transfer by having the court rule in its favor on procedural grounds, after which the plaintiffs did not refile. Soon after, operational control shifted from Bitseller Expert Limited — a Cyprus company — to Andtop Company, a Marshall Islands entity formed in October 2020.
Evidence Confirms Centralized Control Despite Corporate Veil
Atlas stated it obtained over 10,000 emails and documents during litigation that prove the various legal entities tied to Radaris — including Radaris America, Inc., Bitseller Expert Limited, Digital Orbit Corp, Core Solutions Group Inc, Lucky Solutions Inc, Virtura Corp, Veripages Inc., Nuform Solutions Inc., Growth Data Advisors Inc., and Property Experts, Inc — are all controlled by the same small group of individuals based in the Boston area.
The corpus establishes, with documentary evidence generated independently by banks, payment processors, hosting providers, registrars, software-as-a-service vendors and the operators’ own systems, that radaris.com and at least twenty-five other people-search websites are one operation run by a small Boston-area group whose administrative, financial and technical functions sit on the difive.com mail domain and its successors (centerex.com, scienteco.com, eprofit.com, realmo.com, pub360.com)
According to Atlas, the emails show Radaris.com generates approximately $42,000 per month in revenue, while Veripages.com earns around $45,000 monthly through its partnership with Lifetime Value Company. Additionally, the Radaris family of websites earns up to $25,000 each month from Onerep, a company that markets itself as helping individuals remove their data from people-search sites — despite its Belarusian founder operating numerous similar sites.
Domains Transferred, But Legal Battle Continues
As of the court's August 26 ruling, the New Jersey judge determined that Radaris had been given multiple opportunities to appear and defend itself but failed to do so, leading to the transfer of radaris.com and 13 other domains from the Radaris family of companies to Atlas. The domain now redirects to a notice from Atlas about the court-ordered transfer, along with links to prior KrebsOnSecurity reporting.
Radaris’s current attorney, Victor Worms, has moved to vacate the default judgment, arguing that transferring a domain to a plaintiff constitutes an illegal forfeiture and that Radaris.com, as a domain, is not a legal entity capable of being sued. He maintains the lawsuit failed to name the true owners and therefore violates due process.
Wider Implications for Data Privacy Regulation
While the domain transfer marks a significant victory for privacy advocates, the broader legal fight over Daniel's Law continues. The statute faces constitutional challenges in federal court, with over 70 of the Atlas-led lawsuits against data brokers moved to federal jurisdiction on grounds that the law is overly broad and violates the First Amendment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has not yet ruled, but either outcome is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, at least 14 other states have enacted laws modeled after Daniel's Law, though West Virginia’s version was struck down as facially unconstitutional by a federal district court in August 2025. Privacy expert Justin Sherman, author of the forthcoming book "The Middlemen," warned that meaningful change will require federal action, noting that state laws often exempt public records like voting registries, property filings, and criminal documents — leaving a major gap in protection.
Sherman added that without comprehensive federal consumer privacy legislation, people-search companies will continue to operate, especially as industries including social media, big tech, cryptocurrency, and AI intensify lobbying against restrictions on data scraping, claiming such limits would harm the U.S. economy.
Source: Krebs on Security