No Secrets

You go to an event and meet a new person. A friend tells you they are buying a house. A cousin tells you about a cruise that they are taking. In the past you might wondered about her or the place or the trip, and asked around, trying to build up a more complete picture a piece at a time. That would have meant querying a mutual friend, a colleague who lives in that neighborhood, perhaps an associate who took a similar vacation. 

No more. Now the first thing you do when you are alone is grab your phone or your keyboard. A few taps, and in seconds you have all the answers you need (or more correctly, are curious about): history, costs, experience, reviews. No middleman, but first-hand knowledge based on experience or real-life reporting, often from the very people to whom you were talking. Carly Simon said it best: we have no secrets, we tell each other everything.

Well, not really. Of course we still have and keep secrets. Or so we think. But these days only the most determined among us eschews all that interconnection that we have so come to depend on, and which rats us out. Mind you, we're not talking about online firms amassing your data for their own marketing uses, much of which we lazily consent to. What we are referring to is the vast trove of information available to any and all through the publicly available databases that make up our world.

Want to know a person's career path and history? LinkedIn, Indeed, and even Facebook groups help you piece together a dossier any HR professional would swoon over. Curious about a particular house or property? Zillow and its ilk not only give you photos and valuations, but tax assessments, neighborhood amenities and school ratings. And that trip? Expedia, Travelocity and others detail every aspect of every cruise, from menus to cabin size to ports of call, not to mention the all-inclusive cost. 

And those are just the bold face names that come up at the top of any search. Dig just a little deeper and you find a multitude of other of troves of easily searchable information, some public, some private. OpenAddresses and The National Address Database from the US Department of Transportation cover most public and private parcels in the country. Glassdoor and Yelp offer windows into companies, salaries and how they are viewed by customers and employees alike. And with just a little cross referencing, Google Maps and Amazon will show you people, places and products, not to mention pictures of everyone's mailbox.

Wonder what your friends are drinking in Boise? Go to the Idaho Department of Commerce Liquor retail Sales site, and you can sort by individual store, item and day. Heading to the Bay Area and want to borrow a bike? San Francisco Ford GoBike Share tells you the most popular pickup and dropoff spots, and even the best bikes by individual ID number. And if you are sure your bestie called you out on one of her other handles and isn't coming clean, you can use Twitter Advanced Search to scan the 500 million posts a day to nail her.

If you really, really – really - must know, it takes just a few bucks to get access to data that, if not secret, is certainly buried a little deeper. Truthfinder (and other sites like it) scans pubic records of all kinds to compile a folio on any individual who has interfaced in any way with any a government agency or company. There was an old Prego commercial where a newlywed's father disparaged his use of canned spaghetti sauce. A taste of the pot changes his mind. To paraphrase: court records? It's in there. Bankruptcy filings? It's in there. Traffic pleadings, negative reviews, a touch of social media discord? It's in there!

With every transaction moving online, unless you pay for everything in cash and never sign up or purchase anything, there is going to be a record of what you are up to whether you like it or not. You might not post it on Facebook, but it's there for anyone who really cares to find it. Buried, perhaps, but secret? Unlikely. Or as an old Chinese proverb goes, if you don't want anyone to know, don't do it. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has few things worth being secretive about. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.