Did you pay? At least in the U.S., states release ridiculous amounts of information on people. It's "publicly available", but in practice states charge a high f

Did you pay? At least in the U.S., states release ridiculous amounts of information on people. It's "publicly available", but in practice states charge a high fee for the databases, which means most of this data exists behind paywalls. The data on sites like spokeo.com and intelius.com isn't great--not at all comparable to the breadth and quality of data LexisNexis offers with their 5- and 6-figure subscriptions--but it's amazing how many phone numbers, names, and addresses you can still match up. Then there's all the "private" data about you that is commercially available. That's what credit agencies and similar companies do--buy your data from any company willing to sell it. Such databases are so deep and comprehensive that these companies have become extensions of intelligence organizations for all the business they do with government. In fact, just a year or two ago there was the "scandal" where it turned out cellphone companies were selling location data, which some savvy police departments started using to avoid dealing with warrants.