Finding The Right Balance Between What Information Goes Public and what Stays Private is Essential

You can easily find a lot of companies online offering personal information. Why is this the case, why are these companies doing this? For one simple reason: The demand for personal information is HUGE. Let's assume you want to do a background check on your former boyfriend. In other words, you need to find some private information on him. Background verification companies are perfect for this type of job. So what you'll do next is to 'hire' those companies and get the data.

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. So, what is the FOIA (or Freedom of Information Act) 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 must be transparent and provide information, including but not limited to criminal, court, marriage records and so on.

Now, not every type of record is available for every state. Take Oregon for example, they are currently not giving you full access to divorce and marriage records. But Alaska, compared to Oregon, provides you with 100% free access to these types of records.

Information, by itself, is harmless. The issue is actually whether or not the particular individual owning that information is going to use it for bad or good purpose. 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, in fact, we're (in fact) practical human creatures. Most of us don't go to extremes like some people who say they "care about privacy". Or folks that would prefer all personal information to be 100% free without having the consequences in mind.

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.


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