Is Personal Information Public or Private?

Generally, personal or confidential information is private. A person's Social Security number, date of birth, and medical, financial or insurance information is private. Likewise, confidential company information, such as unpatented formulas, designs or processes, or undisclosed business practices, is private. But researchers should know that private information sometimes becomes public. This means that you might be able to find it out – legally and ethically.

Public records are government records. Generally, real estate records, court records, including bankruptcies, liens and judgments, professional licenses, intellectual property filings and business records, such as business filings, public company filings and UCCs, are public record. There may be exceptions to this rule. For example, juvenile court records generally are not public record.

Federal or state law determines what is public record. Because the laws of the 50 states vary, what is public in one state may not be in another. For example, under Maine law, you may use voter registration records to locate a missing heir. But you may not access the records for this, or any other non-political purpose, in several other states. Similarly, you may search records at courthouses for misdemeanors or felonies, but the state's criminal repository – the agency responsible for maintaining criminal histories – may bar access to official rap sheets.

Staying on the right side of the law requires discovering whether the records you want are public in the relevant jurisdictions.

Some personal information from U.S. Military records is available to the public, without authorization from the veteran. This includes name, rank, service number, dates of service and medals awarded. If the service person is dead, the place of birth, place of death and location of burial may also be available. No information is available via the Internet, however. Requests must be made in writing.

Information that is not public record is not necessarily private. It may become public information through legitimate or illegal means. If someone reverse engineers a computer program, and then distributes the code via the Internet, it may become public information, albeit unlawfully. If a disgruntled employee shares confidential company information with his prospective employer, the information may become – if not public – an open secret, albeit unethically.

But information might become public through several legitimate means. A person might volunteer it. Those with a public telephone number choose (by accepting a public listing) to publish it. Job seekers frequently post resumés to public forums. Sometimes these job summaries contain sufficient personal information – name, address, phone number and Social Security number – to launch an illicit identity theft business.

One of the more common ways private information becomes public, though, is through disclosure in a public record. Bankruptcies and divorce filings typically contain private information, such as bank and credit card account numbers, employment, and the names and ages of minor children. Court records in personal injury litigation may contain detailed medical information. Vehicle accident reports sometimes provide vehicle identification numbers (VIN), license plate numbers and driver's license numbers.