The article describes what the collection of information about a person is, 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
Collecting information is the systematic accumulation of data with their subsequent sorting, rechecking, filtering out the unnecessary and using them for various purposes. Such actions can be carried out for various reasons and by various methods, whether it is the search for an attacker, a debtor by credit organizations or a long-dead famous person to compile her biography. They also differ in ways, legal and not, we will talk about all of them in detail.
Police
The first thing that comes to mind with the phrase "gathering information about a person" is, of course, law enforcement and law enforcement agencies that need to find a criminal based on the facts and characteristics of his life. But sometimes such actions can also be of a preventive nature, when a person is only a suspect, and forTo draw up an accusation, you need facts with evidence. Also, the collection of information can be carried out not in relation to a specific person, but to his environment and type of activity in general. This does not always give positive results, but there are situations when such methods managed to prevent serious crimes or terrorist attacks.
Criminals
The collection of information about a person can also be carried out by criminals in relation to a future victim. Most often, various scammers do this in order to use the accumulated information for their own benefit at the right time. This is how telephone scammers acted, who, pretending to be relatives of a person, asked for any monetary services, for example, they reported that they got into an unpleasant situation with the law and now only a large amount can help them out, which must be given to the investigator or the employees who detained him.
For all the dubiousness of such a scheme, such a collection of information about a person paid off, since the fraudster, using the accumulated information, very plausibly impersonated another person.
Such methods also work with industrial espionage, to recruit an employee holding an important position, they use various unpleasant facts of his life and simply blackmail.
Private Investigators
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 inthey are limited in means, and can act only in a certain order. So to the question of whether it is possible to attract because of the illegal collection of information about a person, lawyers answer - it is possible. 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 listening or other tracking devices at home. But, as they say, not caught - not a thief. But they often act within the law, since the detectives or their superiors have no desire to answer later in court and they all value their reputation.
But still, if you become a victim of espionage or decide to engage in such activities yourself, what does it threaten? The fact is that under the new legislation, illegal collection of information for individuals is punishable only by a fine, while for legal entities the amount is much higher, but there is no criminal liability. However, only if you did not make the obtained facts public, otherwise you will have to answer criminally.
Collecting information about a person on the Internet
In our time it is difficult to find a person who would not use the Internet. And most often it is used not only for work or study. The number of social media users is growing every year, and they all leave their footprints there, in the form of photos with geo-tags or clear text about what they did or are going to do. So for a person who has set himself the goal of finding out something about something else on the Internet, this will not be difficult. Given that,that the target is not intentionally hiding or misrepresenting their identity.
Methods of collecting information about a person are very wide, ranging from illegal ones like attacking his computer with malicious viruses to spying, intercepting traffic or rubbing into trust by impersonating an attractive member of the opposite sex. But often there is no need for this, 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 posted facts about himself publicly.
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 bailiff service. True, for this you need to have a person's passport data and TIN.
