• dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    I’ve never understood why things like this have to be a part of public record. Traffic accidents, traffic citations, bankruptcies, buying a house, and even getting divorced.

    All of those are very personal things that should never be a part of public record. And even if they are, the PII should not.

    • Zachariah@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      Simple improvement: Add a fee to access the personally identifiable information. And make the record of accessing the information public.

      Not perfect, but better.

      • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        I believe some things (like DMV records) are fee based. But the fee is nominal and wouldn’t stop any predator from doing bad things if they are so inclined. The only thing adding fees does is to financially incentivize keeping the data online and accessible to anybody who pays.

        • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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          12 days ago

          But the fee is nominal and wouldn’t stop any predator from doing bad things if they are so inclined.

          It might slow down people from doing it in bulk, though.

      • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        Why? To publicly humiliate a person? Not everyone is evil; people fall on hard times. It happens. A lot. Why should they be further harassed by predatory practices of being offered loans after they’ve hit the rock bottom of their financial world? Because the first thing that happened when I filed for bankruptcy was to be offered a mortgage loan.

        • Baggins [he/him]@lemmy.ca
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          13 days ago

          Because you’re asking a court to let you not pay back a bunch of money you borrowed. Is that not reason enough? I’m not sure what you taking out another loan during bankruptcy has to do with that.

    • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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      13 days ago

      Each one of these events is easily shown to have good merits for being public record. Even ignoring the obvious case of “we want to track what the police/courts were actually doing”.

      Traffic accidents

      Occurs in front of your property and cause some amount of damage to your stuff that officers didn’t outline in any reports. You want to be able to figure out who did it so you can send them the bill/sue them. Hiding these records doesn’t make sense. Other obvious uses would be to find out where someone went/is missing, eg if someone died.

      traffic citations

      You’re attempting to hire someone for a job, part of that job is some amount of driving. Being able to lookup if they have any record of driving poorly would be due diligence you’d expect a company to do. Hell getting into an Uber or Lyft… You might want to lookup your driver. You could be surprised.

      bankruptcies

      Hire someone to do something related to finances in your company? Or to file your taxes? Might want to actually double check they’re not idiots on their own dime either. Someone asks you for a loan, or any other financial related stuff. Records of them defaulting are important.

      buying a house

      Your dog ran up to me and bit me, then ran away. Being able to get the property details can be highly important.

      getting divorced

      Can trigger a number of things. If divorce has any kid related issues… and one parent no longer has rights to the child… Schools/doctors can validate that one parent no longer has those rights without just blindly trusting random documents one parent provides.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        13 days ago

        My wife had a forgotten bill get sent to small claims instead of actually contacting her. As soon as it hit the small claims court system she got inundated with ads from law firms offering to represent her

      • CO5MO ✨@midwest.social
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        14 days ago

        I would agree w this. Had a parent get into a minor fender bender & had to help field calls from multiple injury lawyers.

    • usrtrv@lemmy.ml
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      14 days ago

      Exchange contact info with someone after the accident then that someone is extremely petty. That’s my guess.

  • IllNess@infosec.pub
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    14 days ago

    These calls might be from lawyers. Check your mail and see if you are getting mail from lawyers. They are all trying to beat each other to get you to sign with them.