The Secret Weapon Hackers Can Use to Dox Nearly Anyone in America for $15

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.

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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.

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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.

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