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Comment by lwhalen | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, it's kind of creepy. I just identified myself, and they somehow knew what month and year I purchased my car, a list of names I may or may not have been 'associated' with, a list of counties I may or may not have lived in, and stuff like that. I'm not particularly comfortable with a company knowing that much about me, but it's already complete so... horse, meet barn door?

I wish they would at least tell me what sources they're getting this information from.

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It's a standard service aggregated from public records, credit reports, etc. Sign up for any sort of ... anything, and you'll be asked these. UPS accounts, brokerages, Google Wallet, etc.

In many cases (I haven't tried this one in particular), the site you're visiting does not see the questions and answers, so only organizations that already know every detail of your life get to see them.

They seem creepy, but you have to ask yourself: why wouldn't some company know my address and who else lived there at the same time? The companies that send me catalogs and pre-approved credit offerings certainly know. (I forget the entire list of questions, but all the ones I've seen lately are address-based.)

That's actually pretty simple. Equifax is the biggest provider of these types Q&A's. I'm not even sure that the company itself is exposed to the actual answers - I believe the credit bureau just responds with a pass/fail. Admittedly, it would be less creepy and more welcoming if they sent you to the Equifax website to do the verification. That way you would know that no one else actually has or will receive your personal info.

They did have a blurb that said this was all "public information", but if I pop my name and car into $search_engine (for example) nothing relevant comes up.

Search engines haven't indexed everything yet. There are lots of public records that aren't indexed by google, unless they make the news or get the attention of some blogger. This includes civil judgements, tax liens and bankruptcy to name a few.

I'm not sure I believe that talking to credit report companies directly would be more welcoming. They'd probably try to charge you for the privilege of using them. In the UK they're quite known for giving out free reports, then sending you followups + charge you from the next month with no easy way to stop it (in some cases you need to sue them to stop). Not sure who I trust more - Coinbase or Experian...

Our team at Startup Weekend actually worked on "Identity Verification for Developers." So I'm pretty familiar with this. These kind of questions are called "wallet questions." You can get a lot of them from county records, which are public.

Don't suppose you could share a few links where I could find out about digging up this kind of information on myself, could you? I'm kind of curious to see what kind of data-trails I'm dropping :-)

(he asks as he starts dropping search terms into Google...)

What stops identity thieves from using these records too?

I don't remember what other sites they were, but I've done this a few times for identity verification, seems like there's a central provider somewhere that does the same thing for different businesses

Same as everyone else - credit report companies. Experian, Equifax and others. Those already know all your previous billing addresses, credit lines, card numbers, etc.

Probably your credit report. The information you mention is what would be on your credit report, assuming that car was purchased with financing.

I have never financed a car yet my auto ownership history is in these databases.

I think they buy them in bulk from state DMVs.

I think the GP is correct. One such question is something similar to:

"You may have opened an auto loan in January 2010. If so, how much is/was the monthly payment?

A. $0-99 B. $100-299 C. $300-499 D. $500+ E. I did not open an automobile loan in January 2010."

Information like that could certainly be obtained from your credit report but I doubt the DMV knows how much my car payment was.

Does anyone a Stripe-like startup providing a service like this?

Welcome to the new economy.

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