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Building Personal Profiles

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Increased Accessibility

Much of the information that is so problematic online has been available for years to those who knew where to find it. The problems with privacy arise with the increased ease-of-use; one can find out all kinds of information quickly and anonymously. Even if you do not know exactly who has the information you are looking for, a simple web search will point you in the right direction.

Now that records are coming online, we are beginning to see the problems with the records we currently maintain. Starting with someone's name, you can easily get to a home address via Internet directories. If the person lives in a state where the DMV's records are online, one could find out their address and their vehicle registrations. Finding someone's Social Security Number (SSN) is not difficult either. The Congressional Record used to contain the full SSN of all military officers. Many people have their SSN on their resumes, on the web. SEC filings, all now online in the SEC's Edgar database, often contain the SSN of the CEO of the company. Many companies and universities have SSN's available. Armed with SSN in hand, multiple services, such as Lexis-Nexis' P-Trak, can give you all kinds information about that person. (P05.12) The SSN could also be looked up at the Social Security Administration's website, to determine how much that person made last year. It would not be hard to come up with enough information, via "social engineering" techniques, to open a credit line in someone else's name, or otherwise claim to be them. Not only could individuals compile this kind of information, but so could a database company. Using a SSN as a easy identification, database companies may be able to compile very detailed and specific records about any person, called profiles. Such profiles would contain information from multiple databases (credit union, credit cards, medical records, phone bills). Marketers would know your every habit. Privacy as we know it would disappear. There is absolutely nothing stopping database companies from making these profiles. (Full Disclosure)

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