© Lindes
We think we sneak around through life with only our closest friends and family knowing any painful truths about ourselves – the details we keep from the rest of the world. How much debt we have, what our home cost, the details of a divorce – we don’t display those details of our personal life publicly…anywhere. Those are our bumps in life. We all have them. We just don’t want to share them.
Try as you might, though, those bumps leave little trails in the documents of communities, public records, and online social networks. Yes, we don’t want to share our life bruises, but we’ll talk about them online under cover of a username. And then, without thinking about it, we include a profile with our real name, or a link to our family website, or a photo where we’re standing in front of the high school from which we graduated. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to follow those crumbs of information and figure out more about the real you.
Trails. We all leave them – even when we think we’re being extra cautious – and technology is making it so much easier to discover those trails. I, like many people, worry about the environmental footprint I leave on the planet. But how many of us have any idea of the digital footprint we’re building every day? Sure, it won’t harm the environment, but it might come back to bite us in the butt one day.
Here are a few examples of information you can find out about people without them knowing:
Divorce Records – Divorce documents are public records available through the court that processed the divorce. Anyone can go into the court’s records office and request a copy of the file. Any documents in those files can be viewed by third parties and you won’t know they went in and looked. More frightening, some of those files are available online and anyone IN THE WORLD can look them up.
Check out this site: http://www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/docket/index.asp
It’s the Superior Court site for Maricopa County in Phoenix, Arizona. This page leads you to the online court records for civil, family, probate, and criminal court cases. Pick an option, plug in a name and get a detailed calendar of the events surrounding that person’s activity in court. Copy down the case number and lookup any minute entries online and you can view the actual court documents on file with the county. Divorce records are filed in the family court sector.
You can find out who filed motions, who started the divorce, what the judge decided, when the divorce was final and more. For nothing. No money paid. You didn’t even leave your house and there’s no viewable indication to anyone that you even looked at the record.
Property Records – Want to know who owns a particular home? Browse through online property records. Find who they purchased the home from, when they bought the property, square footage and other personal details related to the real estate transaction.
Check out this site: http://www.accessclarkcounty.com/depts/recorder/Pages/default.aspx
This is the recorder’s office for Clark County in Las Vegas, Nevada. To view public records, click on the option to do an Online Records Search. Accept the Disclaimer on the next screen and then enter a name and a date range and search for a match. Scroll down to see all matches. While the documents can only be purchased, you can see the existence of deeds, marriage licenses, IRS lien activity and other financial and property transactions.
Cell Phone Reverse Lookup Directories – Have just a cell phone number and want to know more about that person? Although laws have made it difficult for wireless carriers to publish that information in a form of a white pages listing, those laws don’t apply to third party companies. Hence the launch of reverse cell phone lookup directories online that will take a cell phone number, reverse it, and provide anyone the name and address information of that cell phone number if it is in their directory. They charge money for a full report on a cell phone number but you can find some information in those directories for free.
These reverse cell phone lookup directories go even further. All of those public records you can find across the country? They gather them up and attach them to cell phone records. Some directories offer a complete background check on a person just by entering that person’s cell phone number. Saves you from having to hunt down those public records files yourself and makes it all too easy to get a complete picture of someone’s personal life.
The point is, no one is as invisible as they think. The internet makes that impossible even if you never go online. Any transactions you make in your day to day life that might involve some sort of public record are documented, filed, and stored (often online) for others to view or purchase.
Great for investigators, those who want to know more about a new boyfriend or girlfriend, anyone wanting to do a background check on a new employee or co-worker, or for anyone who wants to know more about who owns a particular cell phone number.
Horrible if you have anything to hide.
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