A search for personal data on ZabaSearch.com, currently one of the most comprehensive personal-data search engines on the net, tends to draw one of two reactions from first-time users: either terror or curiosity. The reaction often depends on whether you are searching for someone else's data, or your own.

Queries to ZabaSearch return a wealth of information that sometimes dates back more than 10 years. The information includes residential addresses, phone numbers (both listed and unlisted), year of birth, and even satellite photos of people's homes.

ZabaSearch isn't the first or only such service online. Yahoo's free People Search, for example, returns names, telephone numbers and addresses. But the information in People Search is nothing more than what's been available for years in the White Pages.

Far more personal information is available from data brokers, including aliases, bankruptcy records and tax liens. However, access to this information typically requires a fee, which has always been a barrier to the casual snooper.

But ZabaSearch now makes it even easier to find comprehensive personal information on anyone.

ZabaSearch may give away some data for free, but it charges for additional information, such as background checks and criminal history reports, which may or may not be accurate. The company also intends to sell ads and other services on the search site, much like Google or Yahoo.

Since ZabaSearch was first launched in February, the site has emerged during a period of heightened sensitivity about data privacy and identity theft, which are now among the fastest-growing crimes in America. Numerous security breaches that have involved personal records have occurred in recent months. Last week, the media giant Time Warner admitted that it had lost the social security numbers of over 600,000 employees. Other incidents of ineptitude or virtual burglary have compromised hundreds of thousands of personal records that were held by ChoicePoint, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Lexis-Nexis.

Critics are saying that ZabaSearch is exploiting the lack of data privacy in America. Personal information is unknowingly being leaked in countless ways, the argument goes, and neither the government nor private industry provides effective ways for anyone to control how their digital identities are being shared or sold.

But the founders of ZabaSearch stoutly maintain that they're not villains, and that their service is a step toward data democratization. If your information is already out there, the logic goes, at least now you'll know about it.

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