The confidential World-Check database profiles individuals and organizations under various categories, using open-source information to uncover their "hidden risk" for government agencies and banks.
In the Apple world, confidential tips about identifying bugs fetch around $5,000 apiece compared with $50,000 or more in the Windows realm.
"My strenuous advice will be that the coordinates of the transmitting entity should be kept confidential, until the world community has had a chance to evaluate what it's dealing with," Davies told the Guardian recently.
US diplomats are concerned that India could be the target of a biological terror attack, with fatal diseases such as anthrax being released into the country before spreading around the world, confidential cables from the US embassy in New Delhi reveal.
In a morning statement rushed out in response to the torrent of confidential post-Rugby World Cup details leaked to the Times, the harassed Professional Game Board chairman Ian Metcalfe used the words "disappointing" and "frustrating".
But how authorities will be able to monitor the compliance of a confidential service like World-Check, which is not open to public scrutiny, is unclear.
The discreet world of confidential embassy cables had seemingly been blown apart.
To serve its clients, Orbis employs dozens of confidential "collectors" around the world, whom it pays as contract associates.
The chief suspect at the time was the dead man's business partner, a private investigator who earned a six-figure salary supplying The News of the World with confidential information.
There is a well-established tradition among journalists all over the world that confidential sources must not be disclosed and many maintained this principle in the face of threats of prosecution and jail.
