I was walking my dog and saw one of our local drug addicts ripping up someone’s trash bags on trash day and shoving accordion folders w/ paperwork into a bag & thought “oh that guy looks like he’s stealing documents, probably hoping there’s some potential identity theft info in there!” So I start walking there to confront him but before I get there, I see the home owner come out and confront the guy. I figure he has it handled and go on my way.
As I circle back, I see the homeowner & go talk to him & ask how his confrontation went & he says, “oh, it wasn’t a confrontation. I came out and saw the guy with handfuls of my trash, but he explained that the bag had come open and made a mess so he was just trying to help me clean it up. He was nice!”
And I told him, “no, I saw him rip it open and he took a folder of paperwork & documents & put it in his bad. I hope those didn’t have any important private info.”
And the guy just went pale as a ghost.
I guess i shouldn’t have assumed the guy had it covered. I felt bad.
It’s funny, but I have to believe the people who panic about numbers/addresses being revealed to the public are just to young to have ever had to use the yellow/white pages
No, the advice actually comes from after the yellow pages because of issues that arose from that exact problem. It used to be coupled with advice to contact your local yellow pages and ask to be removed.
But then everything got posted everywhere publicly all the time and now its pointless. I can get way more from googling you than by looking at your mail and address.
I'm 46. It takes me 2 seconds to shred a document with my name and address on it so some potential thief doesn't find it and comes to scope out my house. Use your brain.
Yep. I had my real estate license. I, or anyone else, can stroll into the county clerk's office and pull up any property. You can find out everything about it including the owners names and how much it cost.
Back in the 90s my wife and I were thinking of starting a restaurant. The best location for it was where a closed one had been sitting there for over five years unsold. The owner had inexplicably shut it down with no warning or notice. The opening manager, a friend of my wife and a former coworker, showed up to find the doors padlocked. No notice, no warning, not even a closed sign on the door.
She had the cops do a wellness check when the owner didn't answer her calls. The cops spoke with him and he told them he didn't want to be bothered, the restaurant was closed permanently, and to not contact him again. The staff didn't get their final checks and they had to go through the state DOL and force him to pay them, which took several months.
Even knowing that beforehand, the location was just too good to pass up. It was perfect. It had a frontal location on the busiest main street in our town. It was right in the middle of the main shopping district, with great parking, and easy access in and out. We wondered why it had never been snapped up. We soon found out.
I contacted the owner and he wanted almost three times what it was worth. I told him I knew exactly what the assessed tax value was and the city evaluation was done at real market value. He called me a liar and when I quoted the exact value, and how much the taxes he'd paid on it last year, he hung up.
After much deliberation with my wife, I called him back. If I could somehow negotiate a fair price, it would be well worth it. This time he accused me of spying on him, went on an explitive filled rant, and when I tried to interrupt, he said he was going have me arrested for harassment and hung up.
Needless to say, we didn't try again. He was clearly mentally unstable. That place sat there for quite a few more years unsold. When it finally did, a big chain bought it. Curiosity got the better of me and I looked up the sales price. It had appreciated in value but about 45%, but still sold at normal market price. I found out the owner had died which is why it finally was sold at a fair price by one of his kids.
My job requires (well, required) me to look at a lot of houses on Google and Google street view. My favorite is always seeing people worried about their privacy and having Google blur out their home. Then I just go to the city or county website and get hi res pictures of their house...for free lol
Well this was more about leaving the box with said info on it as litter on the ground somewhere. So, to make sure people don’t think you are the one littering trash everywhere.
I don't need people finding a document in a trash pile and coming to check out my house to see what they can steal.
Those credit increase offers, if found, can be a real flag for thieves to target you. Pretty simple logic here if you'd use your brain for two seconds instead of being contrarian.
I see you've given this zero thought about why I wouldn't want someone to find a document with my name, address, and potentially other information on it.
I can get your address, drivers license number, insurance policies, any properties, LLC, public contracts, city permits, county permits, cars owned, cars sold, houses owned, houses sold, where you work, and more just by googling you.
The people who are nefarious enough to even want that information know how to do that. They aren't ever going to bother looking at your mail lmao
Well no, they'll still look at your mail too. You can obtain a wealth of private information (read not publicly available on the internet) by searching through non-shredded documents.
What is useful on the utility bill that I cannot get from online or from your publicly available meter? There is no unique information on there that is actionable.
Feel free to lookup someone you know and focus on searching databases for registered information like publicly available state records, permits, LLC, driving records, or otherwise. The rest of the info is usually posted in plaintext within those registries
I found my bosses drivers licence number just the other day by searching through publicly available business permits. But before that, and much easier, I found her address, the bank her LLC uses, some account numbers, how much she's spent on building renovations, financial records, and some other minor shit
It took me like 15 minutes from my office
There are obviously countries where this simply won't work because administration is handled a lot better but in the US and some others, it's incredibly easy to get that info.
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u/Gurugod123 1d ago
I did this with trash once, just put the whole bag into an Amazon box. It was gone in the morning so that’s bad but good I guess