You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide

ED: You may be wondering just how much of your own personal information is out there in a database somewhere. So we put in a call to a man who knows the answer.

Ron Brown is a skip tracer– somebody who finds people who skip town to avoid paying their debts. When he got started in the business in the 1970s, he relied on the telephone and on his wits.

RON BROWN: When I got in the industry in 1973, the primary tool that we used was the telephone book or information. If we can get a telephone number for you, we can break the number. It would go to a physical address and we knew where you were. If we could get your employment number, we could break that number.

BRIAN: How would you get those numbers in the first place, assuming a person had disconnected their phone?

RON BROWN: When a person would fill out a credit application or something, they would list relatives and references. Good skip tracers would have to talk to those people and get them to give them the information.

Now, there were no laws protecting information at that time. So many, many scams were used. You’d call somebody up and tell them that you with the high school reunion group or that you had a check to deliver to them.

There’s was all kinds of scams. I’ve never been a user nor believer in scams. I found that in the skip tracing process back then when I had to talk to people, I was always Ronnie. And Ronnie creates a picture of a young, non-threatening person which people will give information to. We’re taught to help young people. But in the ’70s, it was all done telephonically.

BRIAN: Let’s flash forward to 2013. Without giving way too many trade secrets, what is that same process of finding someone who skipped out on a debt they owe look like?

RON BROWN: Cyber tractors. Where once you left a paper trail, you now leave electronic trails. There’s all types of social science, there’s all kind of data stored on you on the internet. It’s unbelievable.

I would tell you this. With your name and the city you live in, within five minutes, I can have your Social Security Number, I can tell you where you live, when you bought your house, how big your house is, how many bathrooms you have, who financed it, how much money you owe on it.

Within 24 hours, I can tell you every bank account, checking accounts, savings account, stocks, bonds– anything that you have under that Social Security Number.

BRIAN: So give us a couple of examples of how you would find out what kind of house I live in and how to go about collecting from me.

RON BROWN: I go to a database called Master Files. I would put your name in and the city you live in. If I had your Social Security Number. That is going to give me information on you. It’ll give me your current telephone number.

These data brokers buy this information from various sources. If you order pizza, that pizza company– that’s proprietary data that you sell them, your address and phone number.

If you fill out warranty cards, the information you put on that warranty card becomes proprietary data. They own it. There’s no law protecting it. And they’re allowed to sell it. There’s big money in that.

Any information that you give to any lender, unless you op out under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act– and the act was written backwards, in my opinion. The way the law was written, it says they can sell it unless you tell them not to.

BRIAN: And what do you have to do to opt out? I confess. I didn’t even know I could opt out.

RON BROWN: Every year, every credit card company, every bank, every finance company, they have to send you an opt-out notice. It’s usually buried on the back of your bill. But, we’re lazy. I’m in the industry. I’ve never opted out of anything.

So that’s the first place I would go to establish a background on you. Then I would go to social science. And there’s one called Spokeo. And if you’re a member of any– if you’re LinkedIn, if you’re Facebook, if you’re MySpace– it will show every single thing you belong to you. And I can go in there and gather all that data. Now, you may be hiding from me.

BRIAN: I didn’t plan to, but actually now I’m thinking about it.

RON BROWN: You may set your profile to be restricted. I can only see if I’m your friend. I can’t ask to be your friend. It’d be violating the law. But what I can do is look at your friends. They’re not hiding. And all their messages are on there.

We found gentleman a while back who was running with a $90,000 Porsche, and we were always one step behind him, always.

BRIAN: Well, it’s a fast car.

RON BROWN: There was no pattern to what he was doing. We checked his Facebook, and we saw where his friends were talking about meeting on Saint Patrick’s Day at a bar in Boston.

So we had pictures of him that he had posted on the internet. We sent those pictures to an investigator in Boston. They staked out the bar that everybody was going to meet at. They saw him. They followed him to an apartment complex where he was staying with his friend, and there was the $90,000 Porsche.

And the next day, we had helped that gentleman get back on his feet, literally.

BRIAN: I love that phrase.

ED: Let’s just imagine that I’d like to skip town. What should I do to make sure that an unscrupulous version of you can’t find me?

RON BROWN: You can’t. If you think you have privacy in America today, you’re living in a world with a pink sky. You can run, but you can’t hide.

BRIAN: Ron Brown is a skip tracer in Oklahoma City.