Anyone could have acquired this data the time, it was all either free or cheap. Like I said, my business was specialized data infrastructure (e.g. storage engines and analytical parallel processing), we just used these data sources for testing and demos because "free or cheap".

I also have a lot of experience with privileged first-party data but that is governed by a different set of rules and is often regulated. You have to be much more circumspect about how you use it.

Even though it might be convenient to e.g. slurp telemetry off a mobile carrier's backbone, what you eventually realize is the inability to do this isn't a real limitation and in some ways is a blessing in disguise.