Friday, February 25, 2005

Update on My Unlistedness

After talking to the State Attorney Generals office, I decided to find out what I could on my own. Doing a Google search for skip tracing I came up with two very interesting results. First, I went to addresses.com and did a search for myself(J Ovittore Greensboro, NC). It posted no results, but below the no results found message was an advertisement for Intelius.com . The ad read as follows:
SponsoredJ Ovittore Unlisted Phone Number & Address Found Information was found in Public Records, Including Age, Address History and Family Members.www.intelius.com

I went to Intelius and found my record, available for $7.95 for the particular record or $19.95 for and unlimited 24 hour search. I obviously did not want to pay to see the info and went to the contact us button, which directed me to login and pay $7.95 to get Intelius.com's contact info. A little fishy don't you think?

I also came across some interesting stuff on Experian's web site. A credit bureau that sells information to people who want it. I thought a credit bureau's only purpose was to issue a credit report to businesses that an individual was applying for credit with. I am pretty sure they can't just sell your info to just anyone, but I guess I was wrong.

I reported both services to the Federal Trade Commission, who was very surprised at my findings and again will look into it. I did have to explain skip tracing to the FTC consumer representative, which tells me that they do not really know much about it.
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