Eight countries this Actor refuses to run on, enforced in code
Aggregating name, phone and coordinates for hundreds of thousands of small businesses produces a personal-data file. Where that leads under the GDPR, UK GDPR and the LGPD.
This Actor ships a catalogue of 24 countries and refuses to run on eight of them: Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom under the GDPR and UK GDPR, Brazil under the LGPD, and Cuba because that regime was not reviewed. The refusal is enforced in code rather than written in a README, because aggregating name, phone number and coordinates for hundreds of thousands of small businesses produces a personal-data file — many of those businesses are sole traders, and a business phone number for a sole trader is a personal one. Whoever runs the Actor is the data controller for the output.
Key points
Sixteen countries are offered; eight of the twenty-four catalogued are refused.
Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom are refused under the GDPR and UK GDPR; Brazil under the LGPD; Cuba because the regime was not reviewed.
A business listing for a sole trader is personal data: the name is a person's name and the phone number is that person's phone.
Article 6 GDPR requires a lawful basis, and this Actor does not document one for bulk aggregation in those jurisdictions.
The refusal is enforced in code rather than written in the documentation, which is the difference between a limit and a disclaimer.
Sixteen countries in the catalogue are available: Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, the United States and Canada.
Why a business directory is personal data
Because a large share of the businesses in it are sole traders. The business name is a person's name. The business phone is that person's phone, often their mobile. The coordinates are frequently their home.
One such row is a listing. Several hundred thousand of them, structured, joined and exportable, is a file about people — and Article 6 GDPR requires a lawful basis for processing it regardless of the fact that each individual row was published by the person themselves.
Why it is enforced rather than documented
A README warning moves the decision to the operator at exactly the moment they are least inclined to take it. A refusal in code does not. Supplying a bounding box over a refused country does not work around it, because the check is not on the country parameter alone.
Who the controller is
Whoever runs the Actor is the data controller for the output. They choose the area, the vertical and what happens to the rows afterwards. The tool's refusals reduce the surface; they do not transfer the responsibility for what remains.
What else is refused, everywhere
Review text, in every country, because it is writing by identifiable people. Email addresses, because Google Maps does not publish them and manufacturing them would be a different product — zero in 498 records. Individual place pages, because the useful fields already arrive in the search response.
Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom under the GDPR and UK GDPR, Brazil under the LGPD, and Cuba because that regime was not reviewed. Sixteen other countries in the catalogue are available.
▸Why is business data treated as personal data?
Because a large share of small businesses are sole traders, where the business name is a person's name and the business phone is that person's phone. Aggregating hundreds of thousands of those rows produces a file about people, whatever the individual rows are called.
▸Could I not just supply a bounding box over a refused country?
No. The refusal is enforced in the code rather than being a note in the documentation, which is the whole point of the distinction: a disclaimer moves the decision to the operator, and an enforced limit does not.
▸Who is responsible for the output?
Whoever runs the Actor is the data controller for what it produces. The tool's own refusals reduce the surface; they do not transfer responsibility for what remains.
Sources
Every URL below was requested and returned a page on the date shown.
The cap is per query, not per page, so the answer is geographic rather than paginated. What saturation means, why the threshold is 190, and how deep the splitting goes.
Google's own API is the right tool for looking up a place. It is a different proposition when the question is every business in a region, and the difference is structural rather than about price alone.
The first pass extracts no businesses at all. It tells you which parts of an area are dense, which belong to a neighbouring country and which are empty — before you spend anything.
