We’re all getting used to the idea that our personal information information is now public to the extent that we share it on social networks and elsewhere on the Web. Corporate data about people’s roles and functions within different organizations is similarly becoming increasingly public. All you need to do is search on LinkedIn to get a person’s entire work history or Jigsaw to find their direct contact information. Now you can add TheOfficialBoard, a contact database which goes one step further. It shows the organization charts for 20,000 of the largest companies, so you can not only look up an executive like Mark Zuckerberg but also see who reports to him or her.

Org charts are not always the most reliable indicator of power within a company, but they do serve as a handy way to visualize the power relationships within specific corporate networks. At launch, TheOfficialBoard is hit or miss in terms of its comprehensiveness and accuracy. (See Google. Where is Marissa Mayer? Does Joshua Schachter really report directly to Eric Schmidt? Update: he doesn’t). But it will get better over time. Like Jigsaw, it relies on its members to fill out the data about each company. And most of the detailed information is obscured unless you either add three contacts, or you can pay $100 a year for premium access. Both contact data or cash can be traded in for virtual currency, which then can be used to access the data. This data exchange model is also similar to Jigsaw’s, over which Michael once had a hissy fit.

But TheOfficialBoard takes pains to ensure the accuracy of its data beyond simply relying on the contributions of its members. Every e-mail is kept private. Members can only contact the executive through TheOfficialBoard, much in the same way LinkedIn works. Furthermore, it checks every executive e-mail address that is entered into the system and encourages the named executives at each company to verify the information. (The “contact an executive” feature has not yet been activated, the company is waiting until it has amassed tens of thousands of verified emails). Currently, there are 200,000 executives in the system across 80 counties. The service also offers alerts by company or individual executive. The alerts are sent out whenever there is a change in job positions.

TheOfficialBoard is based in France. It was founded by Thomas Lot, the former general manager of Apple France and VP Europe of Amazon. The site was launched with $150,000 in seed capital.

Update: It turns out Forbes.com also has an Org Chart Wiki, which I am told was something Roger McNamee pushed for after Elevation Partners took a stake in Forbes Media. To be honest, it looks like a half-hearted effort and is hard on the eyes. The challenge for all of these services is getting people with the correct information to give it up. For too many people, the incentive simply isn’t there.

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One of my best friends, Tom Ball, has joined their board of directors, which makes our conversations about the company somewhat lively to say the least. All I ask of you is this, Tom – at least try to convince Jigsaw to allow people to get their personal information out of the database so that it cannot be purchased by anyone who visits the site. Jigsaw isn’t the most evil company on the Internet by far, but it is the most evil company funded by well known and respected venture investors. There should be more to an investment decision than the bottom line profitability potential of a company. Its cost to society should be factored in as well.

Unlike competitors like Hoovers and InfoUSA, which gather company information by semi-legitimate means such as scouring SEC filings, cold calling companies and asking for information, and reviewing other public documents, Jigsaw simply pays people to upload other people’s contact information. Users are paid $1 for every contact they upload, and some users have uploaded information on tens of thousands of people. See the demo (and note the other demos on that page as well). Jigsaw is also self correcting, and incentivizes people to also correct bad contact information.

That’s right, the next time you hand out a business card to someone or otherwise divulge your contact information, you may be handing it out to the entire world.

Here’s how it works: Sign up and start downloading contact information. This includes name, title, company, address, email and direct phone line. For example, a quick search brought up all of this personal contact information for Ben Golub, CEO of Plaxo (appropriately smudged):

But wait, it gets much worse.

Anyone can find out if Jigsaw has their contact information via a link on the home page, but amending or trying to delete that information simply puts a flag on the data with the changes noted – but the original information also remains.There appears to be no way to remove your own contact information from Jigsaw once someone has entered it into their database. There is no method that I was able to find on the website to do this (including in the privacy policy), and an email to the company asking about this went unanswered (its been three business days now).

Jigsaw has a carefully worded privacy policy to deal with the fact that they are the antithesis of privacy. They say “This privacy policy covers how, when and why we collect, use and share information about our users…This policy does not apply to our collection and use of data about companies and contacts contained in our database system.”

Is Jigsaw legal? Maybe in the U.S., although I’d love to see a class action case brought against them. Is it ethical? Absolutely not. Every Jigsaw employee and investor has dirty hands and they should be ashamed of themselves.

Like Plaxo, Jigsaw makes money while pushing costs to other people. In Plaxo’s case, its spam. In Jigsaw’s case, its making private contact information public. The problem here is that Jigsaw’s actions aren’t easily found out by people getting constant cold calls and emails – it’s very unlikely they’ll know that these people got this contact information at Jigsaw in the first place.

If they wanted to do this right, they’d set up a marketplace where individuals could choose to sell (or give away) their contact information. The owner of the data could set the price, and Jigsaw could take a cut. Would this model work? Perhaps not, but that just proves my point. The only reason Jigsaw does work is because they don’t have to bear the costs that they push to third parties – all of the people who are in their database.

Management team and investors are here.

UPDATE: Rafe Needleman emailed to point to an article he wrote about Jigsaw in late 2004. He calls it “clever but creepy” and says “I don’t approve of Jigsaw’s ethical position”. I agree.