The International Association of Insurance Fraud Agencies links to state government insurance agencies, insurance fraud associations and international organizations. In the U.S., the same government agency can be responsible for investigating individuals who defraud insurance companies as well as dishonest insurance representatives who steal from or otherwise defraud the consumer. This site covers both types of resources.

The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud delivers consumer fraud alerts and research papers to journalists. The Coalition also has brief summaries of various insurance scams.

The Fraud Prevention Checklist is an interactive guide to assessing a company’s vulnerability to fraud, provided by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

Get insurance company financial profiles and data on the types of policies they issue, from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Consumer education and tips on email scams, mortgage costs, tainted drugs and identity theft prevention are at the federal government Federal Citizen Information Center, Consumer Action Web site. The site also has a complaint form letter and a list of all the federal agencies to which you direct your complaints, with topical indicators (i.e. “Airline Accessibility or Discrimination” or “Telephone Service”)

Some states list enforcement actions at their Web site. The Maryland Insurance Administration regulates Maryland insurance companies and agents. It issues public orders of actions it takes against agents, agencies and brokers, cataloged to 2003. Search all enforcement actions by keyword from the Google search engine using this query but replacing “keyword” with your terms.

keyword site:www.mdinsurance.state.md.us/

The Missouri Attorney General has unveiled a database of filed consumer complaints that can be searched by company name or partial name.The database includes more than 100,000 complaints filed since January 1, 2004. View the complaint number, type of complaint, the number of complaints and the date filed. The site does not provide any information on whether the complaint was pursued by the Attorney General or what the result of any investigation might have been.

The Tennessee Sexual Offender Registry has been expanded to include mapping and photographs of all offenders, and more offenders than were previously on the Web site. Registry of sex offenders expanding, Chattanooga Times Free Press, July 27, 2007.

In advance of any state law, the Rockland County, New York Clerk has installed software that will remove Social Security numbers from the online version of recorded documents. According to this article, New York state tax liens now use a different number than the Social Security number on documents.

A bill signed by the governor of North Carolina will marginally facilitate the reconnection of birth parents and the children they relinquished for adoption. If both parties agree, the adoption placement services will act as confidential intermediaries, providing the birth parents and adult children with each other’s contact information.

The Yuba County, California Sheriff has added a Sex Offender Registry which allows a search by address, name - or partial first or last name - returning a list of all registered Yuba County sex offenders. Then get an email alert when a sex offender registers with the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office who lives within a one-mile radius of the selected address - only within Yuba County.

Search results include a photo, description of the offense, the offender’s registration status, address and map of the location.

A law firm that accessed and viewed archived Web pages of an adversary through Archive.org did not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act , even though those Web pages were not supposed to be available, an Eastern District of Pennsylvania judge ruled. Federal Judge Clears Law Firm Accused of Hacking Opponents’ Web Archives, New Jersey Law Journal, July 24, 2007

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that documents covered by attorney-client privilege are not public records. Work-product may still be covered by the public records law. Attorney-Client Privilege and Public Records Access, Massachusetts Law Updates, July 23, 2007.

Personal emails on government computers may be a public record, which should be determined by a court, in a ruling of the Supreme Court of Arkansas. The determination may rest in whether the non work related computer activity “should be carried out by a public official or employee.” Personal e-mail on public computers not always public, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, July 23, 2007.

Also, see my postings on this theme in other states: Arizona and California, Idaho, and the Sixth Circuit.

The limited statewide California Divorce Index, produced by the Department of Vital Records for a mere 18 years, has been added to the Ancestry.com product line. Divorces that occurred from 1966 to 1984 are searchable by name or partial name, and can be cross referenced with a spouse name or date of divorce, and restricted to a specific county. View a summary record that lists the spouse, location and date of the divorce, or view the microfiche image.

The California Marriage Index, 1960-1985, was also recently added, but this is widely available in other places.

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) is pressing the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into employer compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) restrictions on employment background checks of criminal records. The CDT, Teamsters Union and employee rights organizations prepared an informative petition with claims of incomplete notification and disclosure by employers in the rail transportation industry, instructive for companies taking adverse actions against employees. The consumer reports were drawn from Acxiom data - apparently not independently verified - which turned up false positives, leading to the employees being dismissed.

Petitioners also ask the Commission to examine the current practices regarding the
consent and notice provided to subjects of background checks. Individual employers,
including small business without legal teams or the knowledge to properly implement
the requirements of the FCRA, are conducting credit and criminal background checks in increasingly large numbers. In order to ensure that consumers’ rights as laid out in the FCRA are maintained, the FTC should, at the least, seek to promulgate best
practices for the obtaining of consent and the notification of adverse decisions.

If you conduct reputation research on the politically connected consider downloading the telephone records of the D.C. escort business operated by Deborah Jeane Palfrey. This Web site has 40% of the records in a searchable database, with more to be added.

These are the 1994-2006 telephone records of the escort business based in Washington D.C. which listed a number for a politician, who recently confirmed that he was a customer - for massage services only… Reporters are mining the numbers for connections to other elected officials - and finding some. This advocacy site has images of some of the telephone bills.

The Sacramento County, California, Voter Registration and Elections site has a “Lookup Polling Place” feature that enables you to confirm that someone is registered to vote at a particular address. The search requires you to input street number, zip code and date of birth. No personal information is returned, just a confirmation of current registration and absentee ballot status. I’ve blocked out the street number and part of the DOB in this example.

Salaries of Delaware state employees who are paid with non public funds are not public records, according to an opinion issued this year by the Delaware Attorney General. Delaware State University solicited the opinion in response to a Freedom of Information request. At the time the AG assessed the University’s accounting system he concluded that it coded employee records to distinguish between employees paid with private money and those receiving payments from public funds. The determination is particularly troubling because the two employees on whom the data was requested are both state legislators.[Reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education.]

Of course, any public agency can follow the example of the North Carolina Columbus County Board of Commissioners and bury a public record in a confidential personnel file, then declare - mistakenly - that it’s not a public record.

Search collections of Washington State and Washington cities employee salary databases at this private Web site. Search statewide or within a city or agency. Data is collected for some sources for as much as 7 years. The site also has other databases and links to Washington State government databases for voters, real property ownership, inmates, court filings, restaurant inspections, recorded documents and newspaper name searches.

This South Dakota newspaper did a round-up of each state’s policy on release of government employee names and their pay, and whether an online searchable database was available. It would be a better reference tool if the site had provided hyperlinks to the state salary databases that are online.

Read prior PI buzz postings on databases and issues related to government employee salaries.

Search the online records of disciplinary actions from 2000 to 2007 for funeral homes and funeral practitioners at the Maine Board of Funeral Service. Use this advanced search query at the Google search engine. In this example, I’ve searched the name “Fernald”. Note the Web address in the search bar.

Use the same Google search format to identify Pennsylvania professional license disciplinary actions, including for funeral directors and funeral homes, from 1999 to 2007.

The Oregon Mortuary and Cemetery Board has images of Notice of Proposed Disciplinary Action and Consent Order for cases filed from 2005 to 2007.

The Texas Funeral Service Commission has a one page list of disciplinary actions taken against licensees since September 2006. The record has a name, violation, action taken and date.

This document has hyperlinks to all the state funeral regulatory boards.