Privacy nightmare in Sweden

[stuckinaprivacynightmare]

Long story short, born in Sweden, grew up in the UK, got married in the UK, got divorced in the UK, got retrenched in the UK, headed back to Sweden for a fresh start, started dating again 2 years later.

Had a very bitter and messy divorce with ExH after I left him due to his excessive and escalating gambling problem. Lost my job shortly after as my entire department was made redundant and decided to take a break and move back home to Sweden so I could collect myself and start again. 2 years later I started dating someone, and we moved in together just 2 months ago.

Here we have a ridiculous number of websites, not even shady ones but ones perhaps as popular as LinkedIn in that it shows up right at the top of Google when searching for someone's name, that display my full name, address, birthday, phone number, and details of whoever I'm living with.

ExH found out I'm living with DP and is sending hostile messages to both of us. This I can handle for now but it got me thinking.

I used to have an online stalker who thankfully was thwarted because back then all I used was a common username across a couple of sites. But now with LinkedIn and my professional project portfolio site it'd be even easier for someone to find out where I live, amongst other things.

AIBU to think this is a huge privacy and safety issue?

Really surprised at this. Interesting. I can see the positives but one of the basic tenets of GDPR is opting in. Not having your data shared by default. Am surprised more people don’t request their personal data to be suppressed.

This reminds me of the old "telephone books" we had in my childhood. Anyone could purchase them and they'd list every single person in your town/city - you just search their name and you can obtain both their address and phone number. It was deemed something useful.
However I am shocked that in this day and age (and in Sweden!) no one has screamed about privacy, GDPR, stalking and all above mentioned concerns. It's completely nuts, esp if as PP say there are other details of mortgages and salaries WTH?!
Sounds like you'll have to go through a cumbersome process if you want removed - if that's at all an option.

If you speak Swedish search e.g. ”ta bort sig själv från hitta”. A top result was from polisforbundet.se and seemed very helpful for a number of websites. It would require ”BankID” and you may have to repeat the procedure from time to time. And as a PP stated there is the protected identity route (”skyddad identitet”). To my understanding that may be difficult to meet the threshold for and rather impractical when granted, though, of course, literally a lifesaver in some cases.

How do they manage identity theft? It seems like an open invitation.

It is very easy to access personal information from online. People stalk others everyday online. Yanbu.