Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. Chapter 2 Information Security Fundamentals 53 Public Records City and state governments are putting more and more information online. Public records can contain much information about an individual. This includes information about property ownership. Hackers can use information in public records to obtain more information about a person. Here is an example of using public records to fi nd information about a per- son. A property for sale in Boston is located on Zillow.com. This is an online real estate website. Next, the hacker takes the address and visits the offi cial website of the city of Boston (www.boston.gov). This website has a link Search Property Info with Assessing online. Clicking this link, the hacker enters the address in the Real Estate Assessments and Taxes search box. By displaying the details for the property, a great deal of information is available, as shown in Figure 2-12. This includes the owner’s name and mailing address. Some cities and counties have created free public records directories. There are also websites that collect public records and provide a centralized search engine. Collecting data from various sources is called aggregating data. In some cases, the information provided includes obituaries that reference families and places of birth. This can be valuable information to a hacker. Court records are also in public databases. Most states offer this access for free. In some states, such as California, a small fee may be required to access the records. Figure 2-13 shows an example of a court record from Arlington, VA, that is available online. On this site, you can search for a hearing by date, name, type of hearing, or other criteria. Goodheart-Willcox Publisher Figure 2-12. Public records, including real estate records, can provide much information about a person.