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Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

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Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#191

Post by bogomipz »

dredmorbius wrote: post #175
monodeldiablo wrote: post #163

I've had the misfortune to be present for an in-person demo of a verification service nearly a decade ago. It involved those relationship questions ("Which one of the following people have you not lived with in the last 5 years?") that are incredibly creepy. I was shocked that they had so much data on me -- I have no debt, no credit cards, no house, no car, no bills, and I had always entered informal rent agreements…

Temporary postal mail forewards. USPS NCOA (Change of Address) file is another major data source. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/08/how-the-p...

Thanks for the tip, from the link:

"There is, however, a loophole that keeps data brokers from accessing your updated address. When you fill out the online form to change an address, you can indicate a temporary change that provides six months of forwarding that can then be extended for another six months. That information, unlike the changes marked as permanent, is not included in the master list sold to data brokers."

And the online link for online change of address with the loophole:

https://moversguide.usps.com/icoa/home/icoa-main-flow.do?exe...

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#192

Post by stretchwithme »

dredmorbius wrote: post #175
monodeldiablo wrote: post #163

I've had the misfortune to be present for an in-person demo of a verification service nearly a decade ago. It involved those relationship questions ("Which one of the following people have you not lived with in the last 5 years?") that are incredibly creepy. I was shocked that they had so much data on me -- I have no debt, no credit cards, no house, no car, no bills, and I had always entered informal rent agreements…

Temporary postal mail forewards. USPS NCOA (Change of Address) file is another major data source. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/08/how-the-p...

What makes me crazy about having your mail forwarded is that they often don't even forward it to your new address. I know because I once lived with a crazy person and had to move out and they just kept delivering all my mail there despite duly submitting my forwarding address and stressing the importance of it.

I still get mail for the last folks who lived here and they moved out 13 years ago.

But anybody willing to pay the post office for the data can find out your new address.

And then there's how we pay higher rates for first class mail so that junk mail can be cheaper.

It's almost like the government doesn't work for the people.

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#193

Post by stretchwithme »

bogomipz wrote: post #191
dredmorbius wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Temporary postal mail forewards. USPS NCOA (Change of Address) file is another major data source. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/08/how-the-p...

Thanks for the tip, from the link: "There is, however, a loophole that keeps data brokers from accessing your updated address. When you fill out the online form to change an address, you can indicate a temporary change that provides six months of forwarding that can then be extended for another six months. That information, unlike the changes marked as permanent, is not included in the master list sold to data broker…

Yes, but will they fail to forward the mail as reliably as they fail to forward permanently forwarded mail?

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#194

Post by maldeh »

ams6110 wrote: post #186
monodeldiablo wrote: post #163

I've had the misfortune to be present for an in-person demo of a verification service nearly a decade ago. It involved those relationship questions ("Which one of the following people have you not lived with in the last 5 years?") that are incredibly creepy. I was shocked that they had so much data on me -- I have no debt, no credit cards, no house, no car, no bills, and I had always entered informal rent agreements…

Do we forget that not long ago everyone's name, address, and phone number was published in the phone book (unless you paid extra for an unlisted number), and hospital admissions were published in the daily newspaper. It used to be unremarkable, and now people shriek "privacy!!" when it's discovered that some mundane detail about their life is not a closely held secret.

It's likely the locality / ephemerality / repudiability of those identifiers made them less of a big deal in an era when people couldn't instantly look these details up or build a detailed profile of everybody given the right data sources.

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#196

Post by otto_ortega »

mikehollinger wrote: post #99
JoshTriplett wrote: post #14

If anyone reading this thread is interested: I would pay non-trivial amounts of money on a regular basis for a service that systematically worked to eliminate records like these (and the sources they draw from), as well as chasing down sources of junk mail and the lists they ultimately draw from. The value would depend on effectiveness, and on the degree to which the service clearly reported exactly what they did. Ca…

I actually am running a (year long) experiment. I found a data broker who had my info. They offered a way to "correct" the record, so I added a car that I don't own (who's warranty should be ready for extended warranty offers in a few months) and added many many "off by one" errors like an extra zero on my income, or transposed digits on the size of my house. We'll see where it lands. I personally would also pay for…

> I found a data broker who had my info.

What's the name of it?

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#197

Post by confounded »

goshx wrote: post #59

It pisses me off too. US is so concerned about privacy, yet a LOT of your private information is made public once you start opening bank accounts, buying real estate, sign up for gym, etc. When I opened my first bank account they had a typo in my name, which I found out when I received my debit card. I asked them to fix it immediately, however, two to three weeks later I was already getting mail from stores addressed…

Taking power away from capital to give to individuals is currently positioned as un-patriotic in the US (e.g. pandabear187 above's beleif that regulation of data brokers will lead to fascism or communism, even though he goes to great lengths to protect his own information).

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#198

Post by dqv »

mehrdadn wrote: post #11
pandabear187 wrote: post #3

I have insider knowledge as I used to work for one of these companies. Depending on the product you purchase the data comes from multiple sources. Also these companies have sophisticated machine learning capabilities to build a profile based on various attributes found in seemingly unrelated pieces of data. So the list consists of credit reporting agencies, public records, your online profiles with public access, cou…

Thank you for the reply. Can you actually give some kind of a list though? The entire problem here is everyone explains the how but no one is willing to explain the who . I certainly understand it's "multiple sources", I'm asking who are these sources I keep hearing about. There can't be nearly as many sources as there are sites who buy from them. If you'd like to not name the company you worked for yourself then cou…

If I was a company, I would be writing scraping engines that scraped

* police 2 citizen (a platform many counties and municipalities use to report crime and accidents to the public)

* any public facing dataworks plus web application (or whatever various other municipalities/counties are running): the one for the county I live in lists the arrestee's employer

* district level and state level court dockets

* real estate records, which also link up to tax bills

* public voter records

Not surprisingly, only the information I've ever listed on my voter ID has ever showed up in Intelius/LexisNexis databases.

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#199

Post by intended »

ams6110 wrote: post #186
monodeldiablo wrote: post #163

I've had the misfortune to be present for an in-person demo of a verification service nearly a decade ago. It involved those relationship questions ("Which one of the following people have you not lived with in the last 5 years?") that are incredibly creepy. I was shocked that they had so much data on me -- I have no debt, no credit cards, no house, no car, no bills, and I had always entered informal rent agreements…

Do we forget that not long ago everyone's name, address, and phone number was published in the phone book (unless you paid extra for an unlisted number), and hospital admissions were published in the daily newspaper. It used to be unremarkable, and now people shriek "privacy!!" when it's discovered that some mundane detail about their life is not a closely held secret.

No we don't forget.

Those systems were analog and could only be scaled to a certain extent, after which you ran into management overhead.

So in the example given by the OP, dominoes would not be updating your name in the directory.

That would be data that evaporated and never made it to record.

To increase the contrast - whole new types of clustering and analysis are now possible, at the moment a new data point is received.

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#200

Post by eonw »

mehrdadn wrote: post #119
cosmie wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every company I know in the space is a company that we've had at least preliminary conversations with (seeing if there's any potential relationship to either purchase from or sell to that company). Just having that conversation required getting a mutual NDA in place, since the conversation involves revealing your capabilities (even if not your sources). And that's assuming you're even aware of all the NDAs your compa…

Okay, I see. But somehow someone in your company found out about them before they could sign mutual NDAs, right? How does that happen? Do you just need a higher-up who's friends with the right people?

i imagine its similar to how drugs and weapons dealers meet. when you know seedy people, you get connected. birds of a feather and all that.
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