Illustration: Mark Matcho
Two years ago, I wrote about the privacy threat posed by local governments posting online public documents that include personal data. This practice allowed anyone to get your address, unlisted phone number, Social Security number, and other sensitive data. At that time, anyone who wanted your details would have to know what county (or counties) held information about you and search through deeds, marriage licenses, and other documents for the juicy tidbits. Now a new Web service has made finding public-records data as easy as typing a name.
Zabasearch.com lets anyone search for information about U.S. residents. The site will give you any available street address and phone number for free. While address and phone number searching isn't new, the site can dredge up phone numbers and addresses of people who are otherwise unlisted in any other phone directory.
Additional fees, which start at $20, get you what the company calls a background check--everything that it can find about the person you specify. Online background checks aren't new, either. But many companies that perform them say they provide data only to qualified clients--potential employers, insurers, and landlords, for instance. Zabasearch will sell data to anyone who is willing to pay.
The company doesn't make it easy to remove personal info from its site. You have to send Zabasearch a snail-mail letter requesting the removal of your records. It takes two days for your details to disappear; and even then, if Zabasearch spiders find new records about you from a different source, the company can't promise that your personal details won't show up in future searches.
Though the risks to your privacy are serious, they aren't Zabasearch's fault. The larger problem is that local and state governments have been publishing public records online for years. If you're concerned about your privacy, you should, for now, send a letter to Zabasearch. But the most effective way to protect your data in the future may be to send a message to your elected representatives urging them to limit the amount of confidential information contained in public documents posted online.
Andrew Brandt is a senior associate editor for PC World. You can send him e-mail at privacywatch@pcworld.com. To read previously published Privacy Watch columns, click here.
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