There are a lot of services online selling personal data. What’s the reason for this? It’s because of the huge demand for these types of services. Let’s suppose you have a new dating partner and want to do a “mini” background check on him. In other words, you need to get some kind of private DATA about that person without him knowing. What’s the best thing to do? Use some of these background check services.
At the other side of this we have the privacy industry. If you asked those guys, they would make EVERYTHING private, including your full name. Of course, common sense suggests that taking such an extreme direction is never a good thing.
There’s a third side I support. I call them the ‘balance side’. Those are the people who try to establish a good balance on what kind of information should and should not be available online.
Ever heard about the Freedom of Information Act? This act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson back in 1966. So, what is the FOIA (or Freedom of Information Act) all about? The United States government is required to disclose a particular type of information for the public to see. Before the FOIA, they would keep private any information they wanted. Now they must be transparent and provide information, including but not limited to criminal, court, marriage records and so on.
Now, not every type of record is available for every state. Take Oregon for example, they are currently not giving you full access to divorce and marriage records. But Alaska, compared to Oregon, provides you with 100% free access to these types of records.
Information, by itself, is harmless. The issue is actually whether or not the particular individual owning that information is going to use it for bad or good purpose. The exact same can be applied with the accessibility of personal information on the web. Stalkers can use private data to take advantage of someone. People who haven’t seen a long-lost friend will probably use this information for locating that friend! Maybe the main question is instead: How do we make sure private data doesn’t go into the wrong hands? After all, we can’t possibly read the mind of the person who accesses private data. The current, best solution is this:
Require all individuals who access the private data to identify themselves. This is already being done by governments an companies people use for conducting individual background checks.
As you can see, we are (after all) pragmatic creatures. Most of us don’t go to extremes like some people who say they “care about privacy”. Or folks that would prefer all personal information to be 100% free without having the consequences in mind.
The conclusion: Don’t be surprised when someone asks you to give out your private data in order to access someone else’s private information.
Want to find more information on searching for a particular person/group of people? In that case, I have an excellent resource to help you get started. Check out this free people search article that explores some of the best online people search engines.
Article from articlesbase.com
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