[oortlieb]

Any serious company should learn as much about its competition as it can by operating within legal boundaries. You should absolutely use competing products -- deep understanding of the other options available to your potential customers allows you to differentiate your service.

With my current project, we've learned about every product out there that even touches on a portion of what it is that we're trying to do. We have and will continue to learn the competition. If the existence of a feature is a competitor's entire advantage, then they either will have IP protection or they'll be out of business soon.

Use the site according to their TOS and use your real name. If you aren't abusing their service, there's nothing to fear.

Information on the web is public. I see nothing immoral about using information that your grandma could find.