News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Secret Weapon Hackers Can Use to Dox Nearly Anyone in... by yessen on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @12:20PM (#37224920)
There is a website (blockshopper.com) that scrapes and indexes real estate transaction data from counties that publish it. It’s easy and free to find someone’s address and doxx them. Their policy says that they only remove your data if you are a target of harassment, under court order or law enforcement officer.
Re:The Secret Weapon Hackers Can Use to Dox Nearly Anyone in... by vGPU on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @12:33PM (#37225128)
In general, property tax and ownership data is public. You can somewhat increase your privacy by purchasing property under a business name, but business formation documents are also public for the most part.

For example, I can go to the website of my county’s registrar and pull up the formation and renewal documentation of my LLC with just a last name.

I don’t think you can effectively hide ownership of property without a shell corporation. The Corporate Transparency Act passed in 2021 requires you to provide ownership records to the treasury but I believe that ownership of the corporation can stay anonymous to the general public.

Re:The Secret Weapon Hackers Can Use to Dox Nearly Anyone in... by bombcar on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @12:56PM (#37225491)
It's doable, but the general consensus seems to be it's not worth doing - anyone who wants to dox you for the purposes of legal matters will get it anyway, and that's the biggest reason it's usually discussed.

If you're just trying to keep yourself off the Internet, just change your name to John Smith or Michael Jackson.

Re:The Secret Weapon Hackers Can Use to Dox Nearly Anyone in... by tomwheeler on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @06:27PM (#37229393)
At least in the US, it's very common to for major assets (especially real estate), owned by a trust.

Although a trust is different from a corporation in many ways, they're similar in that they are both legal entities distinct from the people involved (and can both have their own tax ID numbers, also distinct from those people). They're primarily created for estate planning purposes, but public records will typically show only the name of the trust, not the people who live there.

Re:The Secret Weapon Hackers Can Use to Dox Nearly Anyone in... by josefresco on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @12:43PM (#37225273)
I tried it, it has no data from my zip.
Re:The Secret Weapon Hackers Can Use to Dox Nearly Anyone in... by kccqzy on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @12:46PM (#37225312)
When I go to a free people search website (I usually use fastpeoplesearch.com) and search for myself, the only accurate information there is from real estate data (and USPS address changes). But reading the article, I have reason to believe that if we were to pay a people finder website, it could be having better data sources such as credit file header information.
Re:The Secret Weapon Hackers Can Use to Dox Nearly Anyone in... by landemva on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @05:14PM (#37228608)
Hmmmm, so I should be doing USPS change of address every year or so to random apartments in various locales.
Re:The Secret Weapon Hackers Can Use to Dox Nearly Anyone in... by nonameiguess on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @01:42PM (#37226137)
This doesn't seem very comprehensive. As far as I'm aware, every county publishes this information. If I go to my own tax authority's website and search for myself, all of my property tax records come up. But if I enter in my name here, only one state shows up and whoever this is is not me. My name is pretty common, too, so this guy is definitely not the only US homeowner other than me who has this name.