Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

abcactionnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 151 posts

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#51

Post by jedberg »

vonmoltke wrote: post #41
jedberg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most counties redact your name from their public website. But they don’t actually need that anyway. Your credit report has the address of the house and how much you owe on the mortgage. And the credit agencies will sell your info to anyone.

> Most counties redact your name from their public website. In what state? Dallas County (TX) and Broward County (FL) don't. Nor does New Jersey (we have a unified system for all 22 counties). In Dallas County I can even see the names of everyone who owned a property for the previous five years as well. Edit: s/Not/Nor/

In California I’ve never found a county that lists the property owner online. The only way to get the owner is to go to the county recorders office and look it up there.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#52

Post by IgorPartola »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #46
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38

Been happening for decades. When I got my driver's license (in the 1980's) in Iowa, they misspelled my name - Soseph instead of Joseph. I asked for a corrected license. They typed up another one but didn't go back and correct the record. So, I got solicitations in the mail for months for Soseph Altmaier. And that was before computers were used much.

Its the same with voter registrations. Anybody can request it for free. And Indiana charges 5000$ for every voter in the state. Its also the same for property deeds. Public record. Its also the same for courts. I find this practice to be disgusting, but there is precedent for open access to govt record.

The courts one is different. The reason for everything being public is to have transparency into the person getting a swift and fair trial.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#53

Post by tombert »

I think this is disgusting, but as someone who grew up in Florida, I do have to wonder what additional information they are actually getting from the DMV; the driver's license had my name, birthday, and address on it, and most of that was fairly easy to find, even before the succubus of Facebook or Google.

I guess being the sort of anti-corporate person that I am, I do definitely have issue with the US government doing anything to assist for-profit corporations, but I don't know how much damage was done by this specifically.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#54

Post by tbyehl »

fizgig wrote: post #36
totalrobe wrote: post #17

NC does the same thing. And if you buy a house, expect to receive endless junk mail disguised as mortgage documentation.

This has happened in every state I've ever lived. I had always assumed it was the Post Office that was responsible.

They are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Change_Of_Address

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#55

Post by crankylinuxuser »

IgorPartola wrote: post #52
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the same with voter registrations. Anybody can request it for free. And Indiana charges 5000$ for every voter in the state. Its also the same for property deeds. Public record. Its also the same for courts. I find this practice to be disgusting, but there is precedent for open access to govt record.

The courts one is different. The reason for everything being public is to have transparency into the person getting a swift and fair trial.

I was just mentioning all the data sources the govt emits that Ive used in OSINT.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#56

Post by toast0 »

jedberg wrote: post #51
vonmoltke wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most counties redact your name from their public website. In what state? Dallas County (TX) and Broward County (FL) don't. Nor does New Jersey (we have a unified system for all 22 counties). In Dallas County I can even see the names of everyone who owned a property for the previous five years as well. Edit: s/Not/Nor/

In California I’ve never found a county that lists the property owner online. The only way to get the owner is to go to the county recorders office and look it up there.

Califironia has a law against state and local government displaying name and address of elected officials (and maybe some others?). California counties have decided it's easier to just not show any names on online property taz records than figure out who is an elected official.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#57

Post by amerine »

tombert wrote: post #53

I think this is disgusting, but as someone who grew up in Florida, I do have to wonder what additional information they are actually getting from the DMV; the driver's license had my name, birthday, and address on it, and most of that was fairly easy to find, even before the succubus of Facebook or Google. I guess being the sort of anti-corporate person that I am, I do definitely have issue with the US government doi…

How easy would it be for a company to source contact and location information about everybody in a State?

Easy to find? Sure. That’s a bit different than the local governments selling my information that I’m legally required to give them though. This is shady bullshit.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#58

Post by ilikehurdles »

Robotbeat wrote: post #12
born2discover wrote: post #5

Welcome to the United States, where your own government is making money on from your sensitive information... As a European, this bothers me on so many levels. Government should not for one, sell your personal data and furthermore should make sure if it provides access to it, that it isn't used for anything marketing like.

The federal government in the US has pretty strict regulations with regards to PII (personally identifiable information). But apparently Florida doesn’t.

Indeed. That's why the federal government agencies hand over the PII to lowest-bidding contractors and subcontractors who then proceed to abuse and leak it.

Re: Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

#60

Post by imglorp »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #46
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38

Been happening for decades. When I got my driver's license (in the 1980's) in Iowa, they misspelled my name - Soseph instead of Joseph. I asked for a corrected license. They typed up another one but didn't go back and correct the record. So, I got solicitations in the mail for months for Soseph Altmaier. And that was before computers were used much.

Its the same with voter registrations. Anybody can request it for free. And Indiana charges 5000$ for every voter in the state. Its also the same for property deeds. Public record. Its also the same for courts. I find this practice to be disgusting, but there is precedent for open access to govt record.

As usual, maybe they're not making a distinction but there's a distinction to be made: single record query vs bulk export vs aggregate stats. They're three different things.
Post reply on HN