Why does Bighound say some sites are "blocked to us"?

Some brokers actively block automated access — bot challenges, CAPTCHAs, interstitials. When we hit one, we stop, and the dashboard counts it under Blocked to us.

Why we don’t just get past it

We could. The techniques are well known and there are services that solve CAPTCHAs for a fraction of a cent.

We don’t, for a reason that isn’t mainly legal: Bighound’s entire argument is that these companies behave badly. That argument stops working the moment we’re doing the same thing to reach them. A privacy tool that circumvents access controls when they’re inconvenient is making the same “the rules don’t apply to us” move as the industry it’s complaining about.

So: no CAPTCHA-solving, no bot-detection evasion, no pretending to be a browser we aren’t.

What we do instead

We hand it to you, because you’re a person with a real browser and — as the subject of the record — a legal right to your own data. The finding stays on your worklist with the site named and a note about what’s in the way.

Gated doesn’t mean hard. Several of these are a single email confirmation once you’re past the block; the estimate on each finding tells you which.

Not the same as unreachable

Being blocked from searching a site doesn’t stop you removing yourself from it. You can usually still find your listing by hand and submit their form, and Bighound will track it once you mark it submitted.