With my cell-phone number, a private eye found 150 pages on me.

[denverbill]

http://www.9news.com/tech/with-my-cell-phone-number-a-private-eye-found-150-pages-on-me/458558473
......

Starting with just my cell phone number, Martin had obtained my full name, Social Security number, and date of birth. Then came my home address—and every address I’ve had since college. How much I’d paid for my house, the amount of my mortgage, my annual property taxes, even my driver’s license number and the Vehicle Identification Number of my car – all in there. The pièce de résistance, if you want to call it that: A financial overview that includes bankruptcies, liens, foreclosures, and judgments. (I didn't have any.)

Martin also put together a list of my social media pages. In the interest of time he did not do a detailed search, but easily could have; employers regularly engage the company to do just that about new recruits and employees. If there had been a picture of me at a gay nightclub (yep, I’m gay) he could have found that, too, and some employers might use that to fire me (and in some two dozen states it would be perfectly legal to do that). “If you’re on porn sites, we’re probably going to find it,” he added.

......

I was really surprised by this. I guess I need to be way more careful with who I give that kind of information to.

[dalton99a]

1. Kick.

[FBaggins]

2. Most of that is public information

It doesn't take a professional investigator and there's little that you can do to stop people finding the things in that first paragraph (except SSN)

[Egnever]

10. yup theres about a million services that will scrape all that info for you

for a small fee....

[SecularMotion]

3. Here's a tool the pros use

[Egnever]

9. interesting tool

Never seen that before.

[Stuart G]

4. kick and rec...great find and great post..thank you!!! no text..

[Igel]

5. Back in '95 or '96 this was a problem.

Had one of the creators of Darpanet speak to a student group. He said that most things were already being archived.

Next meeting, students showed up incensed. They'd searched on themselves and found a pile of stuff that they thought was private. Some of it they no longer agreed with, some was said in anger, much was just said thinking nobody would be eavesdropping.

It's 21 years later.

But most of that came from your credit report. You can look at your credit report, you get something like one free copy every year from the big three agencies. (At least there used to be 3 three or four years ago.)

[denverbill]

7. Just to clarify, this was not me being searched. I just posted the article from a local news site.

Couple other things.

It's completely illegal to order a credit report on someone without their permission. It's possible since the author requested this on himself that he gave permission for the investigator to pull his credit report, but it didn't sound to me like he did. He said the ONLY thing he provided was his phone number and the investigator got his name, SS#, date of birth, and all this other information. This is most likely information compiled by aggregators from websites and purchased from websites who sell their users data. I'm assuming it's similar to what Cambridge Analytica was using to target Trump voters.

[lindysalsagal]

6. http://clark.com/personal-finance-credit/credit-freeze-and-thaw-guide/

I froze my credit: My ss# is useless to anyone unless I unlock my # on the 3 sites: transunion experian and equifax.

Unless you do this, people can open lines of credit on your number and have the bills sent elsewhere, so you never even know.

I know it works because the car and phone both told me the wrong company and it bounced off.

Seriously, I might unfreeze my credit once every year: $10 is the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy. Peace. Of. Mind.

[denverbill]

8. Credit theft is not the whole story here.

This investigator was able to get his name, date of birth, SS# and every address he had lived at using ONLY his cell phone number.

A stalker ex- who has someone's cell phone number could easily find the whereabouts of their victim legally. A coworker with a grudge who knows your cell phone number could find damaging information about you completely legally and hand it over to your boss.

[Egnever]

11. This is incredibly easy to do.

there are hundreds of sites out there that will give you this info.

[lindysalsagal]

13. I understand that but I like to share the credit freeze information whenever these stories

come up. It's so easy and few people have heard of it.

[Egnever]

12. Trivial on the internet

https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/

Most people just have no idea how much info is out there on them. That is just one site. Google people search and you will find many of them.