What Is The Balance Between Deciding What Information Goes Public Online?

You've probably seen some kind of background verification service on the web selling personal information

. And you may wonder, why would these companies to this? Is this ethical at all? But let's suppose you were in a position where you had to do a background check on someone close to you. In other words, you needed to find some personal information on that person you'll later (hopefully) use for good purposes. Now, that's where these services come to use. That's the reason why you, or anyone else, would use them.

At the other side of this we have the privacy industry. In case you ask those people, I'm pretty sure they would answer that they want everything to be private, including basic information like your first and last name. Of course, common sense suggests that taking such an extreme direction is never a good thing.

There's a third side I support. I call them the 'balance side'. Those are the people who try to establish a good balance on what kind of information should and should not be available online.

Ever heard about the Freedom of Information Act? This act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson back in 1966. What is the Freedom of Information Act (or FOIA) all about? The United States government is required to disclose a particular type of information for the public to see. Before the FOIA, they would keep private any information they wanted. Now they need to provide transparency and present you information, which includes but is not restricted to court, marriage, property records etc.

Now, not every type of record is available for every state. For example, Oregon is currently limiting the availability of marriage and divorce records. But Alaska, compared to Oregon, provides you with 100% free access to these types of records.

Information, by itself, is harmless. The question is whether the person who owns that information will use it for good or bad purposes. The exact same can be applied with the accessibility of personal information on the web. Stalkers can use private data to take advantage of someone. People who haven't seen a long-lost friend will probably use this information for locating that friend! Maybe the main question is instead: How can we be certain that private information doesn't fall into wrong hands? After all, we can't possibly read the mind of the person who accesses private data. The current, best solution is this:

Require all individuals who access the private data to identify themselves. This is already being done by governments an companies people use for conducting individual background checks.

As you can see, we are (after all) pragmatic creatures. Most of us don't go to extremes like some people who say they "care about privacy". Or people who want all private data to be free without taking the consequences into account.

The conclusion: Don't be surprised when someone asks you to give out your private data in order to access someone else's private information.

by: Mark Stankovich

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