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I would mention hitta.se from Sweden. Probably a privacy nightmare to some, and very creepy to others. On the page you can search peoples home address, phone n

I would mention hitta.se from Sweden. Probably a privacy nightmare to some, and very creepy to others. On the page you can search peoples home address, phone number, date of birth, other members living in the same house, real estate value, mortgage rate, all by searching their names. I successfully once identified a parent of a owner of a lost wallet, only containing a gym card with last name on it. Found her phone number on the site, called her and gave her the wallet.

ackbar03 6y ago
WOW. Is this a well known service/site in Sweden? In other countries this would have been blown up into a huge privacy issue. Assuming its not because its sort of underground, why do you think it hasn't in Sweden? Genuinely curious
- NalNezumi 6y ago
  It's a well known site in Sweden. I remember using it at least 10-13 years back. A quick Swedish googling found me a dozens of sites offering similar services. One even offered credit rating assessment at 1.5 dollar after the search. I'm not well read on the issue but a lot of things are digitalized in Sweden. It's a cashless society, where everyone have a personal number that they can use for government service & signing up for phone contracts. The tax institute (like USA:s IRS) sends their deductions out digitally, and AFAIK they have a very open API a lot of digital services in Sweden use for online identification of a private person. So I assume those pages probably use the tax-institutes API for personal information, and then other APIs (such as real-estate portals) to tie information together.
  - airhead969 6y ago
    So, the government knows every purchase they make, tracks everything they do, and can take it all away whenever it wants? No thanks. And what about homeless and old people, are they disenfranchised too? A cashless society controlled by a government or a corporation means a powerless society. Norway has had similar tax return approval by text messaging for almost 20 years.
    - altacc 6y ago
      I don't know what your percention of Norway is, but having moved around a bit and currently being based here, I see that Scandinavians have a different relationship with governments and corporations than in many other countries. For a start, it's not primarily seen as an adversarial relationship. It's more of the people, for the people. Not perfect, but Scandinavian societies rely on a high level of trust and it works, for now. There's been an increase in data protection recently, which I think is needed as it's a bit too transparent at times. The government doesn't know about every purchase you make but there is a lot of data sharing. However there is a lot more consumer protection and less power lies with unaccountable corporations than in many other capitalist countries, where corporations have almost free reign and have powerful influence over society, economy & politic. For example, credit scoring is relatively new here and is a lot less intense than other countries. In places like the UK/USA, credit scoring companies control your financial possibilities. Much less so in Scandinavia. There is a small number of people for whom a cashless society poses problems, but it's probably less, and a different subset, than you think. Those I know of through association tend to be those who suffer severe mental health issues. Old people have bank accounts, debit cards and mobile phones for digital transactions. As for homeless people, there are less of them in Scandinavia than in other countries. Almost all of them will still have a bank account and a mobile phone and be receiving state funds digitally. (Homelessness is not defined as living on the street, almost all the homeless are in temporary housing.)
      - Moru 6y ago
        Besides, you still can pay with real money in most places, you just have to choose the right line at the exit. Not all of them take cash. For us that has no problems, card is so much easier to use but there are a lot of people that can't handle the tech and they should be able to buy things too. All this is marketed as better for crime prevention, less bank/store robbery. Ofcourse this only pushes the cost on the individual in the end though. If you can't rob the store, you can still find valuables in private houses with much lower security. Or just stop any youth on the street. Chances are they have an expensive phone if nothing else.
        6y ago
- adventured 6y ago
  As crime perpetually gets worse in Sweden in the coming decades, it's practically a guarantee their culture will change when it comes to tolerating such privacy violations. They'll begin to lock down formerly open aspects of their culture.
  - gspr 6y ago
    Oh god, you're one of those people.
- Moru 6y ago
  It's not even the only one, there is a bunch of them that gives different levels of information. Partly because the equivalent of social security numbers are public information in Sweden. There are apps for Eniro and Hitta that could tell you if an incoming call is from a known callcenter for example. Not sure they still work after google tightened up security. I'm always amazed I can't find someones phone number outside Sweden when I need one. Here it's just a few clicks away. Sure you can ask to be removed from their register but most wants to be there.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  tax returns themselves are public in sweden and you can literally find out what anyone has paid in taxes by contacting the authorities. Sweden has a different attitude to this kind of information that is fundamentally more about transparency than privacy, so it's not perceived as an issue.
- pelliphant 6y ago
  yes, it is well known. I just see it as a digital versin of the phone book. And there are even more extreme versions, like ratsit.se where you can pay to get credit information on anyone. Personally I think that what ratsit does is probably too far, and maybe it shouldn't be legal. But in general I like our "public information" system, that lots of government information is available to every citizen, I find the benefits of being able to check what the government and those with power does (journalism would be way harder without this), outweights the negatives.
  - nemetroid 6y ago
    It should be noted that when you buy credit information from a site like Ratsit, the person being queried will receive a notice to this effect, including the identity of the person/business making the query.
  - Winterflow3r 6y ago
    You clearly have never been the target of abuse or a stalker. Nothing less fun than when someone on a dating app in Sweden messages you saying "I know exactly who you are" and you know they can find out where you live in less than five minutes. If it works for 90% of people in Sweden, that's good but they should really make it easier to get your information hidden. Phonebooks of old times only had your number not your full address, the type of car you drive, who is your sambo etc
- staticelf 6y ago
  It is well known and no one in Sweden seems to give a shit which boggles my mind as a Swede. Anyway, it was nice but it has only worked well beucause of Swedens low crime rate historically. Now, with increasing criminality due to mass immigration there is only a question of time until these services becomes illegal I think. I have personally been subjected to a stalker, so it will be nice when these services disappear for me personally but I honestly think the utility of them are great. If you find a wallet for example, you can easily find this person and call them due to these services. But for now, the only way to be truly anonymous in Sweden is to get a protected identity which is pretty much impossible to get or to buy some land and switch your home address to that place. People can still get all the properties you own with your "Personnummer" (social security number) but it is harder, less known, takes more time etc.
mongol 6y ago
Also Lexbase. See anyone that has been subject of a criminal trial, on a map. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexbase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexbase
sm4rk0 6y ago
Run a plate for any Swedish vehicle: https://biluppgifter.se/ https://biluppgifter.se/ Another privacy nightmare with complete vehicle history -- better than carvertical.com or vin-info.com
- d26900 6y ago
  Why is the EU so lenient with Sweden in that case?
bashwizard 6y ago
So I'm in infosec and I know a lot of americans and some of them work with OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) and some things that they spend hours on, a 10 year old kid can do in 5 minutes here in sweden. It's kind of hilarious.
adamfarhadi 6y ago
Sweden is a privacy-minded individual’s nightmare. There are a bunch of other sites like Hitta as well. For example on Ratsit you can pay a small amount of money and see anyone’s salary and full personnummer, which is similar to a social security number in the US. If they live in an apartment you can see exactly where in the building they live. Just as an example, when I was visiting a friend for the first time I wasn’t sure where in the building he lived so I put his name into Ratsit and it said “second floor, third door from the left”. It also had his phone number and other information about him as well, including other individuals he lived with and the names of every person in his building.
- nemetroid 6y ago
  > full personnummer, which is similar to a social security number in the US It's similar in the sense that it's a unique number assigned to each person, but the fact that it's publicly available means that it cannot be used as authentication.
  - ptman 6y ago
    And SSN shouldn't be used as authentication either. It's too easy to steal, too hard to change. We have a similar issue with Finnish Personal Identity Codes, which are legally public, but there are restrictions related to their processing. Which leads to the common misunderstanding that they're secret, so they're used for authentication. It's a mess. https://hetueiolesalasana.fi/en.html https://hetueiolesalasana.fi/en.html
- YeezyMode 6y ago
  Doesn't the EU lean towards privacy protection for individuals? I'm assuming Sweden being a member, means that EU laws would take precedence if someone wanted their information removed from websites like these?
  - vinay427 6y ago
    As far as I can tell, the EU tends to lean towards privacy protection for individuals against businesses or other private entities, not against the government, and the focus doesn't always seem to be on governmental datasets being used for private purposes. A lot more governmental data collection is needed to handle things such as mandatory resident registrations in most EU countries, single-payer healthcare in some EU countries, relatively pre-filled tax declarations in some countries, etc. Not Swedish, but the relevant one in the parent comment is probably mandatory residency registrations, and I'm surprised the data is so publicly accessible there. There are usually attempts at creating firewalls in many countries so the data that one agency collects isn't directly linked to that of other agencies, preventing broad files on individuals.
guerrilla 6y ago
Is there any way to get taken off these sites?
matz1 6y ago
This should be the way. This eliminate the issue of information leak/having to hide information, since its public anyway. Of course it has it's own downside. So instead of focusing effort on hiding the information, we should instead fix the issue that arise from information being public.

ackbar03 6y ago

WOW. Is this a well known service/site in Sweden? In other countries this would have been blown up into a huge privacy issue. Assuming its not because its sort of underground, why do you think it hasn't in Sweden? Genuinely curious

NalNezumi 6y ago
It's a well known site in Sweden. I remember using it at least 10-13 years back. A quick Swedish googling found me a dozens of sites offering similar services. One even offered credit rating assessment at 1.5 dollar after the search. I'm not well read on the issue but a lot of things are digitalized in Sweden. It's a cashless society, where everyone have a personal number that they can use for government service & signing up for phone contracts. The tax institute (like USA:s IRS) sends their deductions out digitally, and AFAIK they have a very open API a lot of digital services in Sweden use for online identification of a private person. So I assume those pages probably use the tax-institutes API for personal information, and then other APIs (such as real-estate portals) to tie information together.
- airhead969 6y ago
  So, the government knows every purchase they make, tracks everything they do, and can take it all away whenever it wants? No thanks. And what about homeless and old people, are they disenfranchised too? A cashless society controlled by a government or a corporation means a powerless society. Norway has had similar tax return approval by text messaging for almost 20 years.
  - altacc 6y ago
    I don't know what your percention of Norway is, but having moved around a bit and currently being based here, I see that Scandinavians have a different relationship with governments and corporations than in many other countries. For a start, it's not primarily seen as an adversarial relationship. It's more of the people, for the people. Not perfect, but Scandinavian societies rely on a high level of trust and it works, for now. There's been an increase in data protection recently, which I think is needed as it's a bit too transparent at times. The government doesn't know about every purchase you make but there is a lot of data sharing. However there is a lot more consumer protection and less power lies with unaccountable corporations than in many other capitalist countries, where corporations have almost free reign and have powerful influence over society, economy & politic. For example, credit scoring is relatively new here and is a lot less intense than other countries. In places like the UK/USA, credit scoring companies control your financial possibilities. Much less so in Scandinavia. There is a small number of people for whom a cashless society poses problems, but it's probably less, and a different subset, than you think. Those I know of through association tend to be those who suffer severe mental health issues. Old people have bank accounts, debit cards and mobile phones for digital transactions. As for homeless people, there are less of them in Scandinavia than in other countries. Almost all of them will still have a bank account and a mobile phone and be receiving state funds digitally. (Homelessness is not defined as living on the street, almost all the homeless are in temporary housing.)
    - Moru 6y ago
      Besides, you still can pay with real money in most places, you just have to choose the right line at the exit. Not all of them take cash. For us that has no problems, card is so much easier to use but there are a lot of people that can't handle the tech and they should be able to buy things too. All this is marketed as better for crime prevention, less bank/store robbery. Ofcourse this only pushes the cost on the individual in the end though. If you can't rob the store, you can still find valuables in private houses with much lower security. Or just stop any youth on the street. Chances are they have an expensive phone if nothing else.
      - 6y ago
adventured 6y ago
As crime perpetually gets worse in Sweden in the coming decades, it's practically a guarantee their culture will change when it comes to tolerating such privacy violations. They'll begin to lock down formerly open aspects of their culture.
- gspr 6y ago
  Oh god, you're one of those people.
Moru 6y ago
It's not even the only one, there is a bunch of them that gives different levels of information. Partly because the equivalent of social security numbers are public information in Sweden. There are apps for Eniro and Hitta that could tell you if an incoming call is from a known callcenter for example. Not sure they still work after google tightened up security. I'm always amazed I can't find someones phone number outside Sweden when I need one. Here it's just a few clicks away. Sure you can ask to be removed from their register but most wants to be there.
Barrin92 6y ago
tax returns themselves are public in sweden and you can literally find out what anyone has paid in taxes by contacting the authorities. Sweden has a different attitude to this kind of information that is fundamentally more about transparency than privacy, so it's not perceived as an issue.
pelliphant 6y ago
yes, it is well known. I just see it as a digital versin of the phone book. And there are even more extreme versions, like ratsit.se where you can pay to get credit information on anyone. Personally I think that what ratsit does is probably too far, and maybe it shouldn't be legal. But in general I like our "public information" system, that lots of government information is available to every citizen, I find the benefits of being able to check what the government and those with power does (journalism would be way harder without this), outweights the negatives.
- nemetroid 6y ago
  It should be noted that when you buy credit information from a site like Ratsit, the person being queried will receive a notice to this effect, including the identity of the person/business making the query.
- Winterflow3r 6y ago
  You clearly have never been the target of abuse or a stalker. Nothing less fun than when someone on a dating app in Sweden messages you saying "I know exactly who you are" and you know they can find out where you live in less than five minutes. If it works for 90% of people in Sweden, that's good but they should really make it easier to get your information hidden. Phonebooks of old times only had your number not your full address, the type of car you drive, who is your sambo etc
staticelf 6y ago
It is well known and no one in Sweden seems to give a shit which boggles my mind as a Swede. Anyway, it was nice but it has only worked well beucause of Swedens low crime rate historically. Now, with increasing criminality due to mass immigration there is only a question of time until these services becomes illegal I think. I have personally been subjected to a stalker, so it will be nice when these services disappear for me personally but I honestly think the utility of them are great. If you find a wallet for example, you can easily find this person and call them due to these services. But for now, the only way to be truly anonymous in Sweden is to get a protected identity which is pretty much impossible to get or to buy some land and switch your home address to that place. People can still get all the properties you own with your "Personnummer" (social security number) but it is harder, less known, takes more time etc.

mongol 6y ago

Also Lexbase. See anyone that has been subject of a criminal trial, on a map. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexbase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexbase

sm4rk0 6y ago

Run a plate for any Swedish vehicle: https://biluppgifter.se/ https://biluppgifter.se/ Another privacy nightmare with complete vehicle history -- better than carvertical.com or vin-info.com

d26900 6y ago
Why is the EU so lenient with Sweden in that case?

bashwizard 6y ago

So I'm in infosec and I know a lot of americans and some of them work with OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) and some things that they spend hours on, a 10 year old kid can do in 5 minutes here in sweden. It's kind of hilarious.

adamfarhadi 6y ago

Sweden is a privacy-minded individual’s nightmare. There are a bunch of other sites like Hitta as well. For example on Ratsit you can pay a small amount of money and see anyone’s salary and full personnummer, which is similar to a social security number in the US. If they live in an apartment you can see exactly where in the building they live. Just as an example, when I was visiting a friend for the first time I wasn’t sure where in the building he lived so I put his name into Ratsit and it said “second floor, third door from the left”. It also had his phone number and other information about him as well, including other individuals he lived with and the names of every person in his building.

nemetroid 6y ago
> full personnummer, which is similar to a social security number in the US It's similar in the sense that it's a unique number assigned to each person, but the fact that it's publicly available means that it cannot be used as authentication.
- ptman 6y ago
  And SSN shouldn't be used as authentication either. It's too easy to steal, too hard to change. We have a similar issue with Finnish Personal Identity Codes, which are legally public, but there are restrictions related to their processing. Which leads to the common misunderstanding that they're secret, so they're used for authentication. It's a mess. https://hetueiolesalasana.fi/en.html https://hetueiolesalasana.fi/en.html
YeezyMode 6y ago
Doesn't the EU lean towards privacy protection for individuals? I'm assuming Sweden being a member, means that EU laws would take precedence if someone wanted their information removed from websites like these?
- vinay427 6y ago
  As far as I can tell, the EU tends to lean towards privacy protection for individuals against businesses or other private entities, not against the government, and the focus doesn't always seem to be on governmental datasets being used for private purposes. A lot more governmental data collection is needed to handle things such as mandatory resident registrations in most EU countries, single-payer healthcare in some EU countries, relatively pre-filled tax declarations in some countries, etc. Not Swedish, but the relevant one in the parent comment is probably mandatory residency registrations, and I'm surprised the data is so publicly accessible there. There are usually attempts at creating firewalls in many countries so the data that one agency collects isn't directly linked to that of other agencies, preventing broad files on individuals.

guerrilla 6y ago

Is there any way to get taken off these sites?

matz1 6y ago

This should be the way. This eliminate the issue of information leak/having to hide information, since its public anyway. Of course it has it's own downside. So instead of focusing effort on hiding the information, we should instead fix the issue that arise from information being public.