How to Find a Lot of Personal Information about Anyone
Subtitle: How Anyone can Find a Lot of Personal Information about You
NOTE: This article is being cross-posted both here and in my new
Privacy Blog as this subject seems applicable to both.
Numerous
online sites have been available for years that sell personal
information about you or about anyone else in the United States.
However, one site seems to take this “service” to new heights:
InstantCheckmate.com. The service isn’t free, but it is low-cost. The service is available to anyone with a credit card and an Internet connection.
Instant Checkmate collects and sells an amazing amount of information
about U.S. residents, including criminal records, court appearances
(even where the person was judged innocent or if the case was dropped),
charitable contributions, sex offender databases, information you
provided on social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many
more), professional and business licenses, real estate transactions, and
even appraisals of real estate owned, voter registration records,
employment records, marriage records, birth records (including birth
records of the children of the person in question), residential
addresses, and more.
When I did a search on my own name, Instant Checkmate found all sorts
of information about me, including my FAA-issued pilot’s license.
Question: Do you want others to know all about you?
Instant Checkmate also provides the names
and addresses of sex offenders who live near the person in question.
Yes, you can pay for a search on yourself to see what information
Instant Checkmate has about you, and the company will then provide the
names and addresses of sex offenders who live near you. Of course, sex
offender information is available elsewhere (free of charge) at the U.S.
Department of Justice web site at
http://www.nsopw.gov as well as on a number of other web sites as well.
So where does Instant Checkmate obtain all this information? The
answer is “from legal sources as all of it is collected from public
records.” If you post information or a picture of your newly-born child
on Facebook, that information is available to everyone, including to
Instant Checkmate and other companies that collect personal information.
Court records are public, as are real estate transactions, birth
records, marriage records, death records, and much more.
NOTE: There may be a
discussion about birth and marriage records. Some government agencies
may restrict access to governmental records of births and marriages for a
number of years, but anyone can still legally obtain the same
information from newspaper announcements and other sources. Some states
even restrict access to the states’ death records, but funeral homes
usually submit the same information to newspapers and to Legacy.com and
other publishers of obituaries. Anyone, including Instant Checkmate, may
legally obtain the information from these publicly-available sources
even without access to government records.
In short, Instant Checkmate compiles reports from millions of public
records, including social media web sites, newspapers, all sorts of web
sites, and also from federal, state and local governments. All of the
information contained in Instant Checkmate’s reports is part of what is
referred to as the “public record.”
As you might expect, obtaining a report from Instant Checkmate costs
money. However, there appears to be no way of obtaining a single report
for a one-time fee. Instead, Instant Checkmate requires the user to sign
up for a subscription. That is, the user gets charged every month and,
in return, can obtain a number of reports about different people every
month. The monthly fees are:
$22.86/month provides reports about an unlimited number of people for one month.
$14.86/month provides reports about an unlimited number of people for 3 months.
$9.86/month provides reports about an unlimited number of people for 6 months.
Sound confusing? Here is the statement from the payment page on the Instant Checkmate web site:
“To get unlimited reports, select a
one-month membership for $22.86, a three-month membership for $44.58
($14.86/mo), or a six-month membership for $59.16 ($9.86/mo). Your
membership will automatically renew for the same term unless you cancel
before the start of the next term. Instant Checkmate will charge the
recurring membership fee of $22.86, $44.58, or $59.16 (depending on the
membership option you select) to the same card you use today until you
cancel. To cancel, call 1-866-490-5980 24 hours a day.”
A different page on the same web site says:
“Your five day $1.00 trial lasts until [5
days from today]. If you would like to cancel before the trial ends, you
may do so for any reason and you will not be charged again. Simply call
1-866-490-5980 to speak with one of our Customer Service
Representatives 24 hours a day. Otherwise, your trial membership will
end on [5 days from today], at which time you will be charged the
standard monthly rate of $29.63. Your membership will automatically
renew every 30 days thereafter until you cancel.”
I find it interesting that the pricing on the web site says a
one-month subscription costs $22.86 but on a different page on the same
web site states, “…at which time you will be charged the standard
monthly rate of $29.63.”
So… If I sign up now, Instant Checkmate will charge my credit card
every month forever and ever until I call them on the phone to cancel?
Does the company make it easy for a caller to cancel? Or are they like
AOL, which makes it almost impossible to cancel? I have no experience
with Instant Checkmate, but I well remember the experience with AOL:
being routed all over the company by transfers from one department to
another, listening to music on hold for extended periods of time, and
eventually being sent to voice mail from which I never received a call
back.
Again, I have no experience with Instant Checkmate. However, based on
my previous experiences with other companies that make it almost
impossible to cancel an automatic renewal on my credit card, I am always
suspicious. I gave Instant Checkmate a “virtual credit card number”
that allows for a maximum charge of $30 and also expires next month. The
company will not be able to renew the charge without my approval. You
may or may not want to do the same.
NOTE: I will write in the
near future about how to easily obtain a “virtual credit card number”
that expires on the date that you specify and will have a maximum charge
amount that you specify.
Is Instant Checkmate worth the money? I suspect the answer will vary
from one person to another. The company certainly provided a lot of
information for the money I paid. However, I consider the method of
automatically-renewing credit card charges to be a shoddy business
practice. I only do businesses with companies like that when I can use a
“virtual credit card number” where I control all future charges.
I certainly am not comfortable with the fact that all my information is available to anyone who can spend $22.86. How about you?
I am sad to report that the decision has been made to discontinue The Master Genealogist (“TMG”).
Genealogists
have lots of uses for scanners. We like to make digital images of
information from books, court records, old maps, and even records found
on microfilm. High quality portable scanners are inexpensive these days,
typically $50 and up. You can occasionally find them at even lower
prices if you watch the sales. However, convenience is always an issue.
Do you really want to carry a portable scanner with you at all times
just in case you happen to encounter something you want to digitize?