Re:Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, ...
by justin66 on Tuesday March 07, 2017 @11:53AM
(#13811987)
> When e.g. a court needs to control someone's information surely they know who these people are and they can let them know?
The companies which furnish personal data aggregated from courts are legally required to stay on top of out-of-date records and purge records which are inaccurate. (it would be completely untenable for things to work the other way, with every court and agency which made records available being required to reach out to every recipient of the data. For one thing, in some cases the data can legally be resold.) They can be held civilly liable for distributing false information and might also be in breach of their agreements with the agencies which give them access to the data.
The urgency with which this is required under the law depends on the use to which the data is being put. It's really important to keep data used in pre-employment reports up to date. Marketing data can generally be full of garbage.
This is all generally governed in the United States under the FCRA. It's not an area of the law that you're going to get comfortably familiar with in just an afternoon of reading.
The companies which furnish personal data aggregated from courts are legally required to stay on top of out-of-date records and purge records which are inaccurate. (it would be completely untenable for things to work the other way, with every court and agency which made records available being required to reach out to every recipient of the data. For one thing, in some cases the data can legally be resold.) They can be held civilly liable for distributing false information and might also be in breach of their agreements with the agencies which give them access to the data.
The urgency with which this is required under the law depends on the use to which the data is being put. It's really important to keep data used in pre-employment reports up to date. Marketing data can generally be full of garbage.
This is all generally governed in the United States under the FCRA. It's not an area of the law that you're going to get comfortably familiar with in just an afternoon of reading.