legal to sell a service that monitors black market sites for breached accounts?

[marksmithu]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
Washington

Hi guys,

I am thinking of creating a subscription service to help companies to better prevent account compromises. Specifically, I want to collect stolen usernames and passwords which are exchanged on black market websites. Then I can analyze those data and find out which companies or organizations have records in the dataset. Then I can build a service which notifies the companies and releases the relevant data to them so that they can use the data to protect themselves by resetting user passwords.

However, I have a concern about whether it is legal to offer such a subscription service as the data collected is from the black market. I would appreciate anyone answer this question from legal perspective and also point me to any similar services that you see.

 

[quincy]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
Washington

Hi guys,

I am thinking of creating a subscription service to help companies to better prevent account compromises. Specifically, I want to collect stolen usernames and passwords which are exchanged on black market websites. Then I can analyze those data and find out which companies or organizations have records in the dataset. Then I can build a service which notifies the companies and releases the relevant data to them so that they can use the data to protect themselves by resetting user passwords.

However, I have a concern about whether it is legal to offer such a subscription service as the data collected is from the black market. I would appreciate anyone answer this question from legal perspective and also point me to any similar services that you see.

You plan to acquire stolen usernames and passwords on the black market and then use these to support your subscription service?