That it's used to confirm identity shows how weak identity-theft protections are at most institutions, not what's public information. (For that matter, mother's maiden name is basically public information as well: you can get it from genealogical records.)
The link was preceded by the words "from any of several dozen commercial providers that resell government data:" so that's how I took it. It would be at a .gov domain if it were state affiliated.
Also, "reselling government data" implies that the government explicitly gave permission to a business selling your data. I doubt that's true. More likely, these entities gathered data from whatever entities they could, probably various private companies from which you've made online purchases.
That, and, I've never consented to release my birthday publicly. I consider it to be private, therefore it is private. It's mine! I expect the government would not release it since they use it as part of an identifier all the time.
There's no perfect identifier. That's why we need security. This is a major lapse.
Pretty sneaky of the comment above yours to try to pass dmv.org as a government website.
I think you are confused about what "private" means.
I've never "consented" to "releasing" my address publicly, but real estate records are public information thus the real estate I own is easily queried from my town's website and the real estate transaction was published in all the local newspapers. You can even look up my property tax bills from the towns website and my payment history of said taxes. If you're feeling generous you can also pay my property taxes online too.
Is the list of doctors you visit private? I could probably discover such information, but it is considered private.
Your address is usually public unless you go to lengths to obfuscate it. You can go to Hollywood and get a map of where all the movie stars live. And, the white pages list your phone number unless you opt out.
Birthday has never been publicly available until this voter data leak. Not good.
> I've never consented to release my birthday publicly.
Too bad. The government doesn't care about you consenting to things. In fact, making you do things without your consent is literally the entire point of organized government, even if we usually overlook that because it's for a good purpose (for example, taxation to pay for health care or national defense).
You're off topic. The government hasn't released my birthday. I question their data security practices, but any release of such information would be considered a mistake.
I don't care if you think paying for health care or national security is important or not. That's an unrelated issue to whether or not Birthday is private or public data.
How do you know if your birthday isn't in some publicly accessible government database somewhere? Did you try to find it? Did you hire a private investigator (who has quick access to all those databases) and ask them if they can find your birthday?
If it were, I would let the government know that's not okay. Hackers would be one step closer to being able to sign up for a credit card under my name.
If it's true that that information is out in the wild now, then I expect government to tighten their tech security procedures.
"I would let the government know that's not okay" - lol, yeah good luck with that.
How do you think the RNC got birthdays for 200 million Americans in the first place? Public records. 200 million Americans are NOT affiliated with the RNC.
> How do you think the RNC got birthdays for 200 million Americans in the first place?
As I replied elsewhere, there is a market for reselling your information on the internet. In some cases that is legal, and in many it's probably not. As a tech person you should know this.
Yes, the only reason that anyone cares about their date of birth is that in recent times it has been something that can be used in identity theft. Back in the pre-internet days, nobody cared. People had their SSNs pre-printed on their personal checks too.
The solution to all of this data privacy hysteria is to change our approach. The possession of common facts about a person should not be sufficient to masquerade as that person.
> The solution to all of this data privacy hysteria is to change our approach. The possession of common facts about a person should not be sufficient to masquerade as that person
I think the solution is better security. We'll only ever have basic facts to uniquely identify people. Biometrics can be hacked/copied too.
I think the problem could be mostly solved by requiring people who are getting credit to apply somewhere in person. Most credit card banks have branches everywhere (USA). The person has to have their face recorded stored along with credit line. This would have many benefits: legitimate people would think more about how serious getting a credit card is, fraudsters would be less likely to try and get fake credit, and it would be much clearer when the bank gave credit to the wrong person and has to eat the loss. Unlike the past, taking and storing pictures is now a trivial task. This is not likely to happen as the credit companies little liability under the current system.
>The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) maintains information on approximately 32 million vehicles/vessels registration (VR), 27 million driver licenses (DL) and/or identification (ID) cards, and over 437,000 occupational licensing (OL) records.
>Confidential information is not considered public record. This includes certain DMV personnel matters, physical/mental information, residence address, social security number (SSN), incomplete findings from research, results of ongoing investigations, operation plans, and electronic data security controls.
DOB is listed on ID and not considered confidential information.
Birthday is not public record, and there is no evidence that it is. That's the point. There's no government entity that will give you a list of people's names and dates of birth.
You cited California DMV which does not give up that information. They won't even give you someone's address unless you're legally entitled, like the police.
https://www.dmv.org/public-records/
That it's used to confirm identity shows how weak identity-theft protections are at most institutions, not what's public information. (For that matter, mother's maiden name is basically public information as well: you can get it from genealogical records.)