Nearly six years ago, Scott McNealy famously said that privacy issues are a “red herring… you have zero privacy anyway.”
Regardless whether you agree or not, there’s little question that it’s easy to access certain types of personal information for almost anyone. For example, Google provides reverse telephone number lookups–type in a land line phone number, and Google will return the associated name and address; from there, Microsoft’s new mapping service can show you an aerial “bird’s eye” photo of your target’s location. Whois offers domain lookups–type in a listed web address, and you’ll quickly see the name, address, and phone number of the owner. Zoominfo (a Venrock investment) creates composite resumes–search for a name, and you can find a current and historic employment record, in addition to cached copies of articles found on the web that reference the subject in question (Zoom generates its profiles by compiling data found on publicly available internet documents; the company’s privacy policy has details, including instructions on how to edit or completely delete records).
Other services reveal more, well, unusual information. The results for the Google search for “find SSN” show multiple services that claim to:
- Find social security numbers based on a name and address
- Find the GPS coordinates of where a cell phone is being used based on a cell phone number
- Find historic political contributions based on a name and address
- Find current and historic occupants for any street address
- Find the cell phone numbers and associated billing addresses based on a given SSN
- Find a photo based on a given SSN
- Find working, but non-published, land line phone numbers based on a street address
- Find the name and address associated with a working, but non-published, cell or land line phone number
- Find the numbers that a given cell or land line phone has recently dialed
- Find information about a person’s romantic life (”is he/she a player?”)
- Find names of family relatives, addresses of owned property, civil and criminal court records, voter registration (including political affiliation), tax liens, driver’s license status, and any currently registered motor vehicles based on a name and address.
Some of the above services are apparently available only under certain conditions (eg SSN searches are completed for “permissible purposes” such as work done in conjunction with official government business, identity fraud, etc). Others, such as the one claiming to find a cell phone’s GPS coordinates, may have technical snafus or require more “traditional” methods to get the job done (ie a private investigator). In any case, though, the amount of available information is staggering. And, in most cases, the subject will never learn that others are interested in their data.
McNealy is right; the privacy genie is out of the bottle. Still, there are many important, unresolved questions. First, what privacy rights should we reasonably expect to have? What controls should be in place, and what role should regulators play in enforcement? What does it mean when information–even if it is intensely personal–essentially becomes a commodity? Finally, what can or should we do to protect ourselves?
Update (12/15): MSNBC has a related story. Worth a look.
Good post. Privacy, and lack there of, is almost like a dream. You hear of Identity Theft and the horror stories of individual accounts, yet we chuckle at how easy personal information is available. e.g., your Google example.
9-11 / Patriot Act isn’t helping, but the consumer has less and less control where their information goes.
Would consumer- driven controls over personal information protect privacy? e.g. No entity owns my personal data, rather I dictate who has access to it. Sounds like regulatory action would have to be in place first.
If our data becomes a commodity - identity theft potentially goes up. People adopting multiple identities each month - e.g., I’m Mark Milligan to get a mortgage - then I cash it out, and become Joe Bloe and get another mortgage.
Is technology to blame?
Left by Mark Milligan on December 14th, 2005