Once in a while I check the state’s unclaimed property database. Over the years I have recovered several hundred dollars. When I look up me, I look up names of friends, family and co-workers. If I see a name match, I let the person know and suggest they do some investigation.
I’ve probably done this with 50 or more names, and found maybe 15 matches. I have got a couple of responses that what I was doing was pretty weird, and while not saying so explicitly giving off vibes that what I did wasn’t appropriate.
When a friend did that for me I was grateful.
It’s public information and she saved me the trouble of looking it up.
We still laugh about it though, my big check was $7.13.
Public records aren’t a violation of privacy, and I can see some situations where I would say it’s justified. When it comes to digging into records of someone just because you’ve gone on a few dates, however, it does give me kind of a weird squirmy feeling. I don’t have a criminal record and have nothing of real interest to hide, but I do like my privacy. If someone I was dating, especially just starting to date, went searching my past for evidence of something they thought I would keep hidden I don’t think I would continue dating them. I would always wonder if I could trust them to respect my privacy or if they would feel the need to read my emails, text messages and bank statements “just in case”.
That’s not to say I would keep secrets from my partner or lie to them, but I wouldn’t feel like they were treating me like an adult worthy of respect.
I’m addicted to searching court cases for neighbors, friends, family, people I worked with or went to school with years ago (schadenfreude) or sometimes the name of a perp in a particularly juicy news article just to see what else they have done. I say there’s no problem in conducting the searches, it’s what you do with the information. As for the case mentioned above concerning an attempted drunk driving, I never would have mentioned it to the person nor repeated my knowledge, except maybe to my spouse. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever disclose anything I learned from a records search to a friend or acquaintance, even if it were murder or meth or a bank robbery. I’d just distance myself from them if I couldn’t live with their crime.
That kind of depends on where you draw the line, if you’ve smoked pot or maybe shoplifted when you were younger, then you obviously would be more understanding. If you’re religious and frown on smoking and drinking, you’d obviously have a greater problem dealing with this information.
I’m pretty forgiving when it comes to marijuana crimes, writing a bad check, public intoxication, drunk driving if there was no accident or victims, but I’d totally distance myself from thieves, meth and heroin users, people that have committed physical violence…
In fact, a friend of mine just got married, and I discovered that the new spouse was in trouble for stalking and invading the privacy of an ex-partner/spouse about a decade back. There’s no way in hell I’ll be telling the friend what I know, it’s not my place. Maybe it has already been disclosed, and wouldn’t I look like an ass for bringing something up that wasn’t a problem for them? Now if it were my new mate, then I might put some distance in the relationship until it dried up, but that would be if I was the one that had to take the risk.
Also, on Facebook I watch some gun groups where people buy/sell/trade and I participate rarely. It’s common for the administrators to direct members to the court searches so they can make a good effort to determine if the people they may be dealing with are felons or have any violent crimes in their past.
I think women looking up men that they’re thinking about dating, etc., is fine. Men looking up women would bother me. This is mostly because men, uh, commit more violent crime than women, so there’s more reason for women to be concerned.
I’ve seen plenty of women with convictions for shoplifting, fraud, or trespass/stalking/harassment. I’ve also learned of dalliances with heroin, meth or habitual drinking problems. If I’m a man and my potential female mate has a weakness for heroin or shoplifting, I’d rather know about it upfront and not be blindsided when I’m really committed to the relationship. While such a woman might not kill you, she could really screw up your life with her actions.
Let’s say you had a heroin problem, had several run-ins with the law, or were a shoplifter or embezzler. Maybe a decade has passed, and you feel like you’re on the right track and won’t be relapsing into your old behavior. You meet a man, get serious, maybe marriage, maybe buy a house, maybe comingle the finances…at what point do you break the news about your history? Do you wait until you apply for a loan or a job and the truth smacks him in the face after he’s committed? It’s not exactly first date material, either. I think the conclusion that most people would draw from that hypothetical is that you’re better off making an informed decision rather than just rolling the dice and suffering. It’s not romantic, but it’s safe.
Sorry for double post, tried to edit but it timed out:
eta: A lot of newspapers in smaller communities print the divorces, criminal charges, civil suits in each edition. Bankruptcies and foreclosures, also. In my experience, the slower the news in the community, the bigger the write-ups the courthouse filings receive. On another angle, I don’t think it is any different for you to read it on the court’s site compared to reading it in the newspaper. Or searching a newspaper’s archives where that person lives or lived for their name. In some cases you might be able to say the source of your information is the newspaper, and depending on how recent it is, who could be blamed for reading a paper? I think giving the public direct and thorough access to the court records is just another trend of the age we’re living in where middlemen like newspapers are being cutout of the equation and the information is being placed directly into the hands of anyone that wants it. In fact, my state has a search feature where you can see every public filing for a selected time period. I often use that at least once a month for counties I’ve lived in so I can keep up with the news, since subscriptions to every local paper I’m interested in is cost-prohibitive and the public court site is an efficient and better work around anyhow.
Ah, yes, the woody pecker. Carry on.