Collecting information about a person: goals, methods and responsibilities

The article describes what is the collection of information about a person, why it is needed, for what purposes it serves, what is the assessment of this action from the point of view of the law and an example of such an action on the Internet.

Definition

The collection of information is the systematic accumulation of data, followed by sorting, re-checking, screening out unnecessary and applying for various purposes. Such actions can be carried out for various reasons and different methods, whether it is searching for an intruder, a debtor by credit organizations or a long-dead famous person for drawing up her biography. They differ also in ways that are legitimate and do not, we will discuss all of them in detail.

Police

The first thing that comes to mind when the phrase "gathering information about a person" is, of course, the power and law enforcement structures, which need to find a criminal, based on the facts and characteristics of his life. But sometimes such actions can be of a preventive nature, when the person is only a suspect, and for the preparation of the charge facts with evidence are needed. Also, information can be collected not in relation to a particular person, but his environment and the type of activity in general. Not always it gives positive results, but there are situations when such methods managed to prevent serious crimes or terrorist acts.

Criminals

The collection of information about a person can also be carried out by criminals against a future victim. Most often, such are involved in various scams, in order to at the right time to use the accumulated information for their own benefit. Thus, telephone fraudsters acted , which, appearing as relatives of a person, asked for any monetary services, for example, they were informed that they were in an unpleasant situation with the law and now they can be rescued only by a large sum that must be given to the investigator or the detainees .

For all the doubtfulness of such a scheme, such a gathering of information about a man was paying off, as the swindler, using the accumulated information, very plausibly posed as another person.

Such methods are also used in industrial espionage, for recruiting an employee holding an important post, use various unflattering facts of his life and simply blackmail.

Private detectives

Another area of activity in which you need to be able to collect and extract information is private detective agencies. Unlike the same law enforcement agencies, they are limited in means, and they can act only in a certain order. So the question of whether it is possible to attract due to illegal collection of information about a person, lawyers answer - you can. But for this it is necessary to provide evidence and facts that they really have data at their disposal that can only be obtained criminally. Well, or if you find at home listening or other tracking devices. But, as they say, is not caught - not a thief. But they often act within the law, as there is no desire to answer the investigators or their superiors in court and they all value their reputation.

But nevertheless, if you became a victim of espionage or decided to engage in such activities, then what is the danger? The fact is that under the new legislation illegal collection of information for private individuals is punishable only by a fine, and for legal entities its amount is much higher, but there is no criminal liability. However, only if the facts obtained, you did not make public, and otherwise you will have to answer criminally.

Collection of information about a person on the Internet

In our time it is difficult to find a person who does not use the Internet. And most often it is used not only for work or study. The number of users of social networks is growing every year, and they all leave their footprints there, in the form of photos with geo-tags or open text about what they did or are about to do. So for a person who has set himself the goal to find out something about the other on the Internet, it will not work. Provided that the purpose intentionally does not hide data about itself or does not distort them.

Methods of gathering information about a person are very broad, ranging from illegal by the type of attack of his computer by malicious viruses for espionage, interception of traffic or rubbing into confidence by impersonating an attractive representative of the opposite sex. But often this is not necessary, and using the methods of ordinary social engineering, you can find out a lot. And even if this is done with malicious intent, it is difficult to prove the latter, since the person himself laid out the facts about himself in general.

The same applies to real life. There are absolutely legal services with which you can learn a lot of useful things. Starting from telephone directories on the Internet and ending with the service of court bailiffs. True, for this you need to have passport data of a person and a tax ID number.