Finding someone's Social Security number, age, address, phone number and other such information is the first step a thief needs to steal your identity. Today, we closely associate phishing scams, where hackers trick you into revealing your personal information by claiming to be your bank, or e-Bay, or some other such organization where you have an account.
In fact, stealing identities is much easier than that. There are places where that kind of personal information is continuously placed on the Net and it is guaranteed not to be shut down by the government. Why? Because it is legitimate government web sites that is posting this information for all to see!
In many counties around the US, County Clerks offices are digitizing their record and posting them on the web. All kinds of legal documents are now available that contain very personal information about people's live and their personal information.
For instance, in Fort Bend County in Texas, their on-line records show a 1980 tax lien against Senator Tom DeLay that lists his Social Security Number and address. In New York City, you can get all kinds of info about Donald Trump.
But, now there are companies, called data compilers, who go out and gather all this information and sell it to information brokers, like Choicepoint, the company that recently admitted that thousands of personal records containing people's private information had been stolen.
But, there are many counties that do not publish their data on the web. For these counties, it is very inexpensive for data compilers to obtain thousands of documents on computer disk from county clerks offices. They then send them oversees to places like India where computer labor is cheap and the data is sorted and reclassified for dissemination all over the world.
I have only touched the tip of this information iceberg. You need to read a sobering article just published by SmartMoney Magazine that details even more abuse of our privacy and how information about you, me, and everyone else in America is so readily available. Go to:
http://yahoo.smartmoney.com/consumer/index.cfm?
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