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What Can You Find Out About Yourself, Online?
TexTex asks: "So, I'm doing the usual looking-up-of-phone-numbers-and-addresses thing today, and I'm starting to wonder exactly how detailed some of these engines get. www.555-1212.com and www.switchboard.com are giving me different address with the same phone number, but a reverse phone lookup on www.whowhere.com spits out a third. Granted, I haven't moved around that much in the past five years...but somebody thinks I did. Certain folks who sell background checks and missing persons searches seem to have access to all the cool toys. Land purchase records, post office change-of-address cards, the works. Are these kinds of listings available on the Web?" You'd be surprised at the amount of information about yourself that exists in public records. What are the tools these searching services use, to gain access to this online and how can we (not some company making a profit) gain access to them?
"Freebie searches aside, it seems it is much much easier to find information on someone who's dead than it is on our living friends. ancestry.com does an amazing job of providing info, most of all for free, but I want more. I want more complete info and I don't wanna pay $29.95 for it from the man."
Now, you might argue that this is going to result in a lot of harassment, either from individuals (not too likely) or from spammers and business (likely). But the same argument used against gun control applies here too. If data is outlawed, only outlaws will have data. If everyone has access to information on everyone else's personal lives, nobody will actually make use of it for fear of repercussion. Is DoubleClick annoying you? Post information about the CEO's secret affairs and watch the media jump all over the company!
We can only fear data when it is not available to everyone. Privacy is not a "right"; it is an encumberment to freedom. You can't have both free data and privacy. And when it comes to down to the decision, data can only help us move forward. You can't say that about privacy.
how can we prevent our info from getting on these sites in the first place? I don't know about everyone else, but I don't like the idea of every Tom, Dick and Harry being able to look up my address and other personal contact info. I know this information is publically available in regular phone books, but last I checked, we have the option of remaining unlisted.
Check out http://www.knowx.com . A friend of mine works there. You can find out just about anything if you've got the nickels. I got a report that told me my own stats plus those of my neighbors and the median income level of my neighborhood.
I found myself on 555-1212, much to my surprise as I've only lived in this location for 2 months and I was entered twice (both with incorrect spellings). What's even worse are the tie-ins that companies like these use. At 555-1212, I could search public records, that required me to provide even more information, or I could look for classmates from high school, which required a host of information about my high-school years. And people will just enter this stuff. They have no worries.
Personally, I'm careful with the information that I give out, but I'm not paranoid. I know people can find out a lot about me with just very simple searches like this, but at the same time, I don't fill out surveys, I don't fill out sweepstakes registration, and I'm sure as hell not giving out any more personal information than I need to. Unfortunately, many of these sites present that personal information as information necessary to look up your request, which just isn't true, and people freely give it cause they're greedy for the specific information they want.
But again, I'm not intent on hiding my information. I just want to make sure that it's protected so that only I can change it and so that I can determine how it's used. I haven't heard any successful ideas on how to manage that.
Give Egosurf a try... it gives some rather interesting results.
Some public records are not on line, but private companies wade through them and sell the info. Most of these companies are set up to distribute to the same large companies which deal with the large government collections.
Individuals and companies who need such info then subscribe to those large collectors, or buy individual records through private investigators and credit reporting services. There also is cross linking, such as when you hire a P.I. in your city and they hire one in another city to go look up records in a distant courthouse.
But it's often easier for individuals to just pay one of those services than go get individual copies from the original sources.
I have an unlised phone number and I've tried to find my information online and have thankfully been unsuccessful. The only place that I've been able to find myself is classmates.com and that is something that I actually registered for.
I would bet that all of the information that they are getting is coming from public information e.g. documents filed by the court, phone book, web sites you've registered at...
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
In all three of the directories mentioned in the article.
I haven't spent any amount of effort in trying to hide myself. I wonder how they put this data together. They're not checking phones, since I've got a whole three of them. They're not checking emails of web registrations. They're not checking property ownership records, because I do own a home.
I think I used to be able to find myself when I used switchboard.com, and get lots of really ancient addresses, phones and email addresses, going all the way back to '91. But it looks like I've been deleted from there!
I think I probably ought to be happy about this. But it still makes me wonder how they try to fill those databases up.
Doesn't the US have laws about reverse lookup?
It caught me a bit by surprise because for a long time, we've had legislation that restricts various types of searching on databases - electronic or not. (This is in New Zealand, and I'm sure many other countries also.)
The flagship example is that phone companies aren't allowed to make directories searchable by phone number - by anyone outside the phone company, at least. (Similarly, a phone book can't be indexed by number.) I'm not sure of the specifics, but I think anyone who slapped their own reverse index on someone else's database would also be in trouble.
For the same sorts of privacy reasons, we're not allowed to use one organisations primary key as a primary key in a second organisation's database. Does the U.S. have something like this? It's annoying sometimes that I can't just use someone's IRD number (like a social security number) for a primary key, but there are important ethically based database synchronization reasons for why it's not allowed.
===
The first time I did a search on google for my name. I have wondered ever since who has linked to those ZDNet talkbacks. Every time I go back I always get surprises.
For instance Usenet articles from the early 90's have be immortalized by David Rusin. A very bad example of my early code has been rediscovered, a random letter in soc.culture.bahai has turned up, etc.
Sometimes I just have to wonder...
If you have been online for any time, try your own name. You may be surprised...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I must be doing something right. I ran searches on each of the mentioned directory searches, and NONE of them had a listing for me in any of the locations I have lived in for the last three plus years. And I haven't tried living anonymously.
Gonzo
I've given up on protecting "my info." But I do feel MUCH better knowing the routes it takes as it hops from marketer to marketer.
These are some tactics that have worked quite well for me.
1) Add a bogus 2nd address line to every form you fill out: Delta Airlines thinks I live in Apt# D, United thinks I live in Apt# U.
2) Pay for the unpublished (not unlisted) option from your local phone company. (This is huge: local telcos are egregious sellers of info.) Why exactly I have to pay $.75 each month to NOT have my info sold is beyond me.
3) Spend a few hours every month removing yourself from such engines. Often one database will feed several rebranded engines.
4) Go to junkbusters.org and use their opt-out engine. It takes a bit of doing, but its worth it: just enter your info once, and it'll create foldable, mailable, one-page "gimme off your damn list" letters.
I'm under no illusions: these tactics just help me SEE who is selling my info.
If data is outlawed, only outlaws will have data. If everyone has access to information on everyone else's personal lives, nobody will actually make use of it for fear of repercussion.
Your argument makes no sense. The one guarantee that all the online privacy battles have shown us is that people abuse access to other people's private information. If everybody on Slashdot could lookup your address and phone number to flame you every time there was a disagreement, what would happen isn't that everyone would use restraint but instead that several slashdot flamefests may spill into the real world. Remember several people have threatened trolls with violence for posting to slashdot, do you really think it would be great for everyone to have access to every other person's informtion?
For a real world example, do you think it is safe for anybody a woman happens to give her phone number to have immediate access to her address? If these sites catch on, it would make dating turn into an even bigger game of Russian roulette (and probably completely kill chances of most people ever meeting anybody at a nightclub) than it is now.
PS: Your text in bold is exactly the point. Currently if someone has an excessive information amount of information about me and/or is tracking me then they are stalking me. Your post seems to want to make stalking a legal right. Whatever.
PPS: Your many eyes watching theory of keeping peace, was a hallmark of communism in its heydey. Citizens were encouraged to spy on each other and weekly denouncements were held in local meetings. This lead to the tyranny of the majority opinion on those of minorities. It is far easier to enforce conformity when all deviation is available for public consumption. How many people would be actively gay if all it took was a website lookup to determine their sexual preference? Even better how many Wiccans are Satan worshippers would practice their religion of their religious preference was available for all to view? Think about it...
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
This site lists the last sale price of a house, or every house along a street. As near as I can tell, it's accurate, complete, and up to date. I think that the data is from public records of leins against property.
John Brunner's incomparable The Shockwave Rider described a world where almost all information was free. Anybody could find anybody's history of interaction with the ubiquitous 'net -- including all purchases. Anonymity and privacy were so long forgotten that they weren't even mentioned in the book.
Shockwave was a novelization of Toffler's Future Shock. The protagonist is able to surf the tsunami of change that was rearranging the landscape of the world...any hacker that hasn't read it should run to their favorite used-book store to get a copy.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
My Texan friends use a term called "kickbangers". They're robbers who kick down the door and start shooting, on the assumption that the homeowners have guns and will shoot them if they(the thieves) don't shoot first.
Now, I'm just a canadian so they may just tell me all these stories to scare and hype the dangerousness of their wild wild west lives. but they also have shotguns in their trucks, so they may be telling the truth.
I don't think robbers fear people who have guns at home, because if it becomes wide spread they'll just shoot you then rob you, as opposed to just robbing you.
but...this was originally a thread about privacy, not gun control.
A few weeks ago I got a call from work from slashdot's very own emmett, which suprised me. I'd meet at Linuxfest (it was the best (and unfortunately only) Linux Tradeshow I've been to) , but didn't think I'd gave him my card.
When I asked him how he found it, he said he found my resume online (The only copy with that work number though was on a friends server with out any outside links to it (that I could remember))
He asked me to verify my address so he could send me something he said. (I hoped for something that didn't tick), but since I haven't got anything , (except for Credit Card application) I'm sure there is a Slashdot conspiracy and they are secretly compiling a list of contact information of all there readers, for some nefarious Vandover purpose.
I guess the moral to this story, is if you want to keep your privacy, be careful what you put online, as it is there forever, (with mirrors and search engines). That and never tell emmett your home address.
This Signature does Not Exist !! FNORD
Since no one else is posting any sites to find info... here goes.
...and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Try a search on deja.com for your name, you might be surprised.
Yahoo! People Search
FAQ: How to find people's E-mail addresses
Yahoo! People Search
InfoSpace
ICQ Search
BigYellow.com
If you outlaw something, you don't affect criminals who already have shown that laws won't influence their behavior, but you do have a strong influence on law-abiding citizens
This argument crops up whenever the topic of gun control is raised, and it's valid - in the short term.
Guns don't last forever, especially when they're in the hands of criminals and likely to be lost on a botched crime or during a gang war or when evidence must be dumped.
If the general public doesn't have access to guns, the replacement stream for these missing weapons slows to a trickle, for a _long-term_ benefit.
For an example of what the steady-state situation looks like after gun control, take a look at any country that's already _had_ gun control for a few decades.
Would I fear getting mugged walking through a city park in the dead of night here in Toronto, Canada? Sure.
Would I fear being shot? Nope.
Could one criminal get one gun up here if they really, really wanted to? Probably.
Could a hundred criminals get themselves an arsenal for a gang war? Maybe if they spent enough time at it, but it would be a hell of a lot more work than it would be down in the US.
In conclusion, I feel that the long-term benefits of gun control outweigh the short-term problems.
Okay, Mr. "Data Wants To Be Free", how big is your penis? (Flaccid and erect.)
This isn't a troll. It's an honest question. After all, if you're of the opinion that privacy is "an encumberment to freedom", then you should also be of the opinion that you have no right to conceal the length and girth of your member from the public. Correct?
So, how big is it? To prevent you from (ahem) "exaggerating", it might be best for you just to scan it and post the pics on the Web. Use a ruler so that we can easily spot any GIMP or Photoshop trickery. Thanks!
Reverse lookups are available at http://www.infospace.com/yp.sp/reverse.htm
seanmeister
Richard Powers had a good essay in the NY times about the impossibility of privacy. He is an eccentric and shy writer, and never had a credit card or even a checking account, quietly deciding to opt out of the "system". He discovered he couldn't get a phone line installed because he had no history. Even when he offered to pay money up-front. I suppose the IT business rules in the phoneco. were coded that way, and god forbid a human being making a decision on your phone line.
The point of the essay was that privacy isn't only a personal preference, but it's not *possible* any more if you want to live a fairly normal life. Even getting a phone or a house on rent requires you to be plugged into the system and give your pound of flesh, or live like a hermit in a shack.
The days when you could visit a doctor and pay only for that visit without involving a multi-billion dollar insurance industry having all your personal records cross indexed, are pretty much gone. Privacy is not possible any more, even if you are willing to pay for it.
I have had something very interesting happen with my personal info. Most notably, there seems to be no acknowledgment besides our phone bills that we have a second phoneline going into our house. I didn't order the line so I don't know what my parents might have said to the phone company when activating it. We previously had the number at another address, and when we moved we transferred it along with us to our new residence.
However:
a) We don't pay the unpublished/unlisted fee
b) It's not in the phonebook
c) I can't find it in ANY online databases
d) It doesn't reverse search on anywho or anywhere else.
No record exists of this number at EITHER residence. I would think with our move someone would have picked it up. I can barely find any evidence of it on our phone bill either, other than another page or two. No where do I actually remember the number printed.
So I ask, how did I accidently manage to keep this number totally anonymous? Perhaps when they ordered the line, one of my parents mentioned it was for a "modem" only? Would Bell Atlantic maybe have some crazy kind of "hey don't waste your time dialing this number cause it's a MODEM" flag? Maybe BA royally screwed up and this number doesn't even exist in their phone records anymore yet it still WORKS? (whee, free calls for me I guess!) This has perplexed me for a while and I was wondering if anyone else ever had this happen.
It will come down to "Never do anything that you wouldn't be caught dead doing". (-:
The baaaaad side is, of course, that you then have to trust *everyone* not to abuse the information. That is a losing game, in a big way.
Take an "innocuous" example: your online information profile happens to match a pattern that some gummint body has decided typifies mass murderers (paedophiles, people who would sneak a bomb into the US President's 'plane (and now that I have the snoopers' attention) litterbugs, whatever), so you are, in the mildest case, personally watched "just in case" - or in an extreme case, detained or "helped" in some way ("Yes, mister Jones, I hear you saying that you're a doctor. Are the walls comfortable?").
Or take a case which is likely to be a reality in parts of present-day Germany, for example. The local skinhead club hits your online data in a search for local Jewish, Negro or Asian people (anyone non-Aryan) - and you and/or your house/car/business suddenly get trashed.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I meant how many Wiccans or Satanists not are.
I need to use the preview button more often. *embarassed grin*
Forget phonenumbers and addresses, if doubleclick started selling info to the general public I could probably find out what anyone has browsed in the last few months and have a pretty good idea of their online interests.
A transparent web (all identies and actions known) would probably be a much less interesting place as people would become afraid to post anything anywhere or even visit potentially questionable sites.
People like Signal 11 or Vladinator, who put more info about themselves online than even I care to know, are on the other (exhibitionist) extreme...they must be fearless or stupid (perhaps both). I'll bet neither will be proud of their online records (held cached in searchengines for eons) in 10 or 20 years. Imagine if someone cracks into slashdot and reveals all the true identies of the people posting here under pseudonyms (like me) who post thinking they are effectively annonymous.
I'm sure there are many like me here that egosurf once in a while just to check that there are no unexpected suprises from the past showing up on line.
On the other hand, if all information about everyone was available online (including surfing and posting history) mabey people wouldn't take this privacy shit so seriously and others might even be surprised that you haven't ever looked for porn on the web or be surprised that you don't have any un-PC opinions about any topic.
I wish we could all be completely free with all thoughts, fearless of what anyone else thought of our thoughts. But the majority of us fear the thought police and are afraid of what can be found out about us on line. Fscking political correctness, it really sucks.
Pseudonymously yours,
Y
no sig.
An interesting thing to do next time you register software or give information to a web site is to misspell your name slightly and keep a record of how it was misspelled. Make a list of variations and which site you submitted to. In a few weeks/months when you get junk mail addressed to you with a variation of your misspelled name, you will know which site is giving away your info to others. Probably a good reason to NEVER give out your real info ever again unless absolutely necessary.
Bored? You can spend hours at Nedsite looking for info on yourself and long lost buddies. I imagine trying to opt out of being in all these different databases would take more effort than it's worth. Might as well get used to the idea that there will always be ways for people to find you on the net if they know how/where to search. People in certain professions don't even have an option of opting out - take a look at Lawyer Search or Doctor Search. I also wonder where these guys: Birthday Search got their data from.
Information is indeed begging to be set free - including your own.
HTTP header ad space for rent! Advertise to thousands of server log readers - only $50 a week per header! 1-800-SURFALOT
Did anyone else notice this? What a bunch of bastards!
Ha! I kill me!
Just my opinion though, since I haven't psychoanalyzed the person who posted that.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm a privacy rights advocate.
I have an unlisted number.
For some reason, switchboard.com has my number listed with an old address. Don't know where they got it from.
Additionally, there is no opt out clause on their page. AND, there's a link at the bottom of the page that says "click here for sales leads, mailing lists, and business credit reports."
Looks like its time for me to move and change my number again.
= )
Come on, Tinkler, Tink!!
The Federal law is the Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994, and it was upheld by the Supreme Court in January in the unanimous decision of Reno v. Condon . In a nut shell, federalism issues don't prevent Congress from regulating the sale of such information as an appropriate regulation of interstate commerce.
(When the DPPA was originally passed, it only required an opt-out provision be provided to angry motorists. However, Public Law 106-69, 113 Stat. 986, which was signed into law on October 9, 1999, changed that to an opt-in requirement, which will all but assures that no such data will be released, owing to the slightly non-zero intelligence of most Americans and their/our general laziness.)
One consequence of Reno v. Condon demonstrated, however, is that because Congress has plenary power over these data, while we can hope and demand that privacy be enforced, Congress is equally capable of legislating that companies be allowed to use/sell such data, and under the Supremecy Clause of the constitution, all state privacy laws to the contrary would be trumped. It's a scary thought.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
To provide even a sliver of the information they claim to be able to provide they would have to have agreements with every auto repair shop in the country, which I don't think is all that likely either, and even if it was then they could only report as far back as when that relationship was formed. The only way they could really provide all the information they say is to spy on every car owner!
I have to wonder about sites such as that one and the so called "online private eye"-type sites that claim to be able to tell you more about a person than is in an easily databased public record. All of the stuff that the private eye sites claim to be able to get for you is public record of course, but I was trained as a Private Investigator and I'm not so sure that a web server would be given access to the information that they claim. Besides it's not that hard to gather the information yourself, if you've got the money. You might as well just skip the middle man and request the information straight from the government agencies themselves. There are plenty of publishers which sell books with the necessary addresses/procedures in them.
After reading this Ask Slashdot and it's thread, I decided to read about *myself*.
I couldn't believe what I uncovered.
Here is a direct quote:
Partnership projects could be exciting and challenging. If necessary, ask for help in completing daily tasks. You may be excited about plans in the office that will expand your horizons. Some romantic situations may not be what you think they are, however. Take off any rose-colored glasses and let others be who they really are. Prepare for the unexpected and celebrate.
How could *they* possibly know all this about me!? I am shocked and in fear. Please, Mr. Jon Katz, my hero and savior... write one of your insightful articles probing this invasion of my privacy.
GenChalupa
Let me make it easy.
The US Constitution. Complete with annotations.
Look for the word "Privacy", I dare you.
If you actually want to learn something about the legal state of privacy in the US you might want to pick up a good book on the topic...
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I am one. Always have been. The internet just gives me more people to talk with.
I remember when I found out in the early 90's that sci.math was read by tens of thousands of people, most of whom never posted. Wow. How could they not post?
By the time that dejanews began there was already a pretty good history on me had anyone bothered archiving it. Turns out that a few people did. Heck, by the time I found out that dejanews existed they already had a pretty good handle on me. That doesn't bother me. Most of what you will find publically is pretty innocuous. While there are a couple of items out there I would prefer to not have public, they are few and far between.
OTOH I cannot understand people who have online diaries. I don't mind chatting online, but I don't say anything that I would object to being announced in a large auditorium...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Whenever I have to give personal information, I just fill in the form with bullshit -- I like to call myself "Pr. Nonnof YURBIZNESS" and my phone number comprises an astonishing number of "69". I also travel a lot, having lived in such countries as Anguila (don't know where that is), Burkina-Faso (it's in Africa, isn't it?), and lately, Antartica.
Well anyway, a good strategy against that kind of website would be to pollute their database as much as possible. That'd be cool, huh huh.
So just remember: you may not want to pop $40 to find out about someone else, but someone else might not have any problems spending $40 to find out about you...
-p.
At least some satanists do not particularly believe in being honest. The very fact that true Wiccans are likely to be ticked off at the pretense is actually a motivation *to* pretend to be Wiccan. Think about it.
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I went and browsed a little bit for info on Alfred E. Neuman (what, me worry?) from one of my honeypot machines. (OT, there are a lot of A.E. Neumans out there :-)
Saw a number of portscans from stats.555-1212.com (209.10.41.43). Not just ports 137/138/139, but also 80, 23, and a few of others. It looks like a modified nmap in slow stealth mode.
I'll have to try from a windoze based honeypot and see what they are trying to dig out of netbios shares.
I'll be contacting globix.net security about this system and its obvious violation of their AUP, but they've got a reputation for ignoring abuses about paying commercial customers.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
"It's addressed to...Mrs. Channandler Bong"
I've moved around so much in the last few years even Columbia House has given up on me.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
At a buck per address they'd have a hard time finding buyers. At less than 4 cents per name your loner made less than two bucks for the day.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.