The Movie Database Support
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Excessive personal information when requesting API key
posted by Daniel DemusSTAFFMOD on December 4, 2016 at 11:50 AM
Why do you require that much personal information when requesting an API key? I can understand a name and email, but requiring a phone number and physical address are excessive in these privacy challenged times.
Additionally "state" is not relevant in most parts of the world, so making that required tends to indicate that you didn't consider the contents of each field.
Is it your policy, that if you are not willing to disclose your telephone number and address, you can't have an API key?
Reply by Travis Bell
on December 5, 2016 at 5:05 PM
Hi Daniel,
There's a few reasons for this, historically it's been primarily because of people who abuse our service. However, as TMDb has grown up the reality is that the service we provide for free is worth thousands of dollars a month from our competitors so we feel it's a small price to pay for admission.
State or province is fine.
Yes, that is our policy.