How the hell do estranged family member find your address?

[anissa834]

On reddit, I read a lot about toxic families. How people work hard to move away from toxic controlling and sometimes abusive parents and how their parents are trying to force their way back into their adult children's lives and try to force their adult children to reconcile and how they randomly show up to their doorsteps unannounced harassing them.

Just story I red about yet another adult who had to deal with their toxic parents and in the story, her mom showed her to her house despite never telling her where she lives, despite that the poster lives states away from her family.

How do estranged family members just find you ?

I understand they can find your workplace but how do they find your home address ?

192.com for anyone on the electoral register.

It is incredibly easy to find out details, now more so than ever.
You can find an address and also all kinds of other stuff.
Ever run in a park run? There is your name with, date, time location.

You need to not have your name on the electoral roll, mine isn’t due to a very abusive ex husband who was threatening to kill me and did serious physical harm to me. No online presence either. I belong to a walking group, they always do a group photo at the end. I always take it, I’m never in it. That’s the lengths I go to so he can never find me.

I did work in library and information services and as a researcher for projects so it does seem very simple for me. But it’s really very easy with everything online.

I work with women who have suffered domestic abuse. Some have moved hundreds of miles to escape their abuser.

Over the years, several have been located by their abuser by him posting on community Facebook pages under a female profile, asking if anyone knows the whereabouts of eg Susie who I went to school with/worked with/long lost relative, think she's moved to this area and keen to get back in touch etc etc. Sadly many people are free and easy with the personal information of others, not thinking of the possible consequences.

Electoral roll

Google image search if you are ever in photos

They may have placed a tracker in your car without you knowing

If they know where you work they can follow you home quite easily

If they have access to your email (gmail or similar with password not changed for some time) they can get your adress

Similar for eg Tesco ordering account

That’s really frightening! Can’t believe people give others details away 😳😳

I'm astounded by the amount of people that tag others in Facebook posts from random strangers asking for information on community sites. I live in a very touristy area and it’s common to see these type of posts on the local pages.

@BananaNirvana Not necessarily full addresses and phone numbers, but enough for a determined abuser to track them down. Eg the neighbourhood she lives in, my kids are at school with hers at XYZ Primary School, I know her from the gym etc.

You can tick a box on the electoral roll to hide your address, but I suppose some people don’t.
Companies house is an easy source if they’re involved in a company and use their own address.

Mine has just attempted to find me. I suspect she (or someone close to her) has searched for me on Facebook and seen posts I’ve made in local community groups. So let’s say I live between Guildford and Woking so I post in local groups related to events in both. The thing that was sent to me was addressed:

My name
Woking
Guildford
Surrey
and then a random central Guildford postcode (actually for a primary school, I think they just picked one at random)

I don’t live in either of these places (and obviously live somewhere much more rural small town than Surrey 😂), but it got to me because enough people know us to work out where to deliver it from the sorting office. Thanks a bunch. 😂😩

I suspect now that they know it made it here, they know the county and area and will work backwards from there. There may even be GPS on the delivery tracking so they’ll be able to see exactly what house it ended up at.

If that all kicks off again (I’ve had 3 years of peace since we moved!), I will have to get a solicitor on it. They live outside the UK so police cannot help.

I knew someone who was living under an assumed name to evade his parents. His dad, who was a detective, had the police follow him home from work. The police weren't very subtle.

--

It's always other people who give people's data away never the person trying to hide. It's usually things like group photos from school plays or kids clubs that do it.

Most people aren't that bright when it comes to sharing personal information. These days people give away far too much (and far more than they think they do) in public posts to social media. But it's also quite hard to completely lose yourself short of going completely off-grid - there are always legal trails left behind and means of finding people that aren't actively hiding themselves.

Social engineering is also quite effective for this.

That removes it from the edited electron roll but not the full one, most people do to minimise junk mail etc.The full one is technically publicly available ( or certainly used to be) if you go in person to the council ( who obviously only have their area), and the police, politicians and local councils ( plus a few others) can access the full one easily.

Social engineering is also quite effective for this

Social engineering is quite scary when you look at what's involved. Equally the "Joe Bloggs is missing help find him!" Appeals from non official sources are nearly always from abusive individuals tracking down people who are hiding

People will give away peoples addresses quite happily on missing pages on Facebook.

I’m banned from three separate ones for posting on “my sister and her children are missing” posts stating that people should only give information about a supposedly missing person to the police. Not in the spirit of the pages apparently 🙄

Someone gave my brother, who has a conviction for violence against me, my new address on there. Even helpfully told him the colour of my new car. They now scuttle away from me at school events as it simply never occurred to them that in this day and age if someone has “lost contact” with someone it’s likely deliberate

This is not the case.

The full version of the register can only be used for:

• electoral administration purposes (such as sending out poll cards before elections)
• campaigning activities (for example, candidates and political parties sending election communications to voters, surveying opinions or fundraising)
• preventing and detecting crime
• checking applications for loans or credit
• jury summoning in England, Wales and Northern Ireland

www.gov.uk/electoral-register/opt-out-of-the-open-register

Of course, if you were struggling to find someone, asking on a large social media site for ideas could help ...

They might be tracking your phone without you knowing it. Happened to a friend. She had no idea you could track phones. Turns out her former partner had turned it on when they were still together.

I'm always wary of this sort of thread, with everyone giving ideas for how people can be found.

Not that I think you're up to anything malicious, OP, I'm just thinking of lurkers

Exactly my concern

A quick Google search will turn up plenty of ideas. This thread isn't really giving anything away.

Are you looking for ideas?

They already know.

Informing people why they shouldn't be such naïve, gullible, eager-to-help idiots on Facebook whenever they see a "Trying to trace a friend.." request can only be a good thing.