I came across a press release for a commercial outfit that supposedly enables you to run all kinds of background checks on people if you input their Social Security Number and name. It pitches to those wanting to check up on potential nannies, etc.
But what caught my eye about this particular site was that there was almost no information on who the principal(s) were behind it or how they would secure any information inputted. For contact info, they list an email address and a phone number. Not even a name. Considering the nature of the site and the fact that users/customers have to provide their credit card info for the service, I’d say that’s cause for concern. So I did a lookup on the site and found that it was registered by someone outside of the U.S. A little digging revealed that the same individual is also the registered owner of at least one other domain hosted on the same server that sells diet pills.
So this blog entry is just a reminder: Let’s be very careful out there lest you wind up inputting information that can be used against you. The owner of the site I checked might be a very honest, responsible person, but really folks, don’t input any sensitive information on a site unless you’ve really checked them out.