According to an investigator and the branch itself, the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles (MVD), necessarily the official edition of the DMV, sells driver photographs and Social Security numbers to researchers.
The sale highlights the continued distribution of non-public driver data to businesses, which privacy experts and legislators have continually criticized recently. sensitive maximum data retained by other people living in the United States.
“In Phoenix, Arizona, I can enter [the MVD] and I can take a picture,” he told Motherboard Dorian Bond, a researcher at Bond Investigations. “That’s smart because if I’m tracking a space for an insurance company, I need to check who that user is. “
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Valerie McGilvrey, a Texas-based jump tracker tasked with locating other people and who said she came to the knowledge of the DMV in general, told Motherboard why a personal investigator needs to get someone’s SSN.
“For us, Social Security numbers are used to determine if the user record I’m looking for is the right user. Also to stumble upon fraud, because other people will use a fictitious social network when applying for credits or a property lease because it accredits,” he says. Bypass trackers can be hired to track other people who are on bills they owe or if they are fugitives.
Private researchers can also use an NSS to search for others in other personal databases. Igor Ostrovskiy, a personal investigator at New York-based Ostro Intelligence, told Motherboard that they might come with asset searches, which require a date of birth and an NSS to locate savings or retirement accounts.
As Motherboard has already pointed out, DMVs across the country sell driving force data to a wide variety of personal entities, adding customer credits that report on Corporate Experian and the LexisNexis Corporation of Studies. Some DMV documents explicitly state that the purpose of this sale is to generate revenue.
“This is an income-generating contract,” it reads in a document from the Indiana Office of Motor Vehicles received in the past through Motherboard.
Records sold by DMVs, in addition to personal investigators, may come with the driver’s name, code, date of birth, phone number, email, and zip code. sell photographs of people’s driver’s licenses or social security numbers. However, Arizona MVD differs.
“The law has strict criteria for personal investigators to download images, and Arizona can provide them in such cases,” Doug Nick, deputy director of consumer awareness communications at the Arizona Department of Transportation, told Motherboard in an email. “Social security numbers are included if the criteria are met,” he added in an email. In one of his emails, Nick included a link to the Driver Privacy Protection Act (DPPA), the law governing how DMVs can distribute data.
“I can pass [the MVD] and I can take a picture. “
“Disclosure of identifiable data is covered by federal law. MVD adheres to the provisions of this law,” Nick added.
But as several personal researchers have explained to Motherboard, the reasons why researchers can give DMVs access to knowledge can be exaggerated and abusive In some cases, researchers would possibly only say they want the knowledge to anticipate litigation, but the consumer would. may not finish taking legal action.
After the publication of this article, Nick added in a follow-up email that the cash from the sale of MVD knowledge “is adequate through elected legislators and part is controlled through the Arizona Department of Management to help develop applications, develop online pages, pay online processing. , accommodation and assistance facilities for state agencies. Additional dollars go to the National Highway Fund to help build and maintain roads in Arizona. “
In July 2019, The Washington Post reported that DMVs provided photographs taken of people’s driver’s licenses to the FBI and immigration and customs system for facial popularity systems.
Update: This article has been updated to include more data from Doug Nick, Deputy Director of Customer Outreach Communications at the Arizona Department of Transportation.