Are there no murderers, crazy ex-boy/girlfriends, targeted harrassment and spam calls in Sweden?

Not that any other country does much better in this regard. Still it sounds a little wild to me that you can get this information without even needing to hit a shady forum and download some csv. Maybe lowers the bar too much.

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Alpha3031 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've been told back in the day it was quite normal get a physical, dead-tree book with similar information sent out to you every year, until people decided that was a waste of paper.

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consp 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It used to be illegal here to reverse look up a name matching to a phone number, since it was "owned" by the state telephone company and they didn't want that happening. But you were allowed to reverse look up the address of a number and then look up the person and match it to the number. So that magic happened under the hood. The trick was getting the residential information but since that wasn't a problem in the '90s I'm sure it is even less of an issue now.

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SoftTalker 6 hours ago | parent [-]

When I was a kid there were reverse phone books that were indexed by number. Not common, and I think they were pretty expensive, but the IIRC the local public library had them.

	▲	stefanfisk an hour ago \| parent [-]
		When I was a kid in Sweden that was just part of the local phone book.

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MisterMunchkin 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But that was optional, you weren’t forced to reveal your location to the person who raped you

	▲	s3p 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Who was talking about rape?

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lifeisloving 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When I lived Norway, my gf at the time would look up the license plates of cars that annoyed her and could see how much debt they had on the car to make fun of them. Scandinavians are oddly very open with this type of personal info.

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piva00 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In Sweden I have looked up someone's phone number through the info I got from the license plate to notify the owner of a BMW M5 that their 20 years old son was often speeding down the 30km/h street close by my house where kids would cross coming from the metro or a bus stop nearby.

The owner just thanked me, and said was going to have a chat with the driver. Never saw that car speeding nearby again.

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ninalanyon 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When you do this the owner of the car is notified. And there is an audit trail because you do it by sending a text to a premium number.

The debt information is there so that when the owner sells the car the buyer can check to see if they actually really do own it outright.

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embedding-shape 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't even see salary or what your debt is as "personal information" (am Swede not in Sweden), personal information is stuff that no one else would need to know. What people earn affects not just people around you and others in the workplace but also society at large, makes a ton of sense for that stuff to be public.

Especially great that you can see what employees at competitors earn, what your peers at your workplace earn and what your boss earns. Become a hell of lot easier to ensure you're not exploited. Helps that Sweden has a really strong union-culture as well.

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melvinroest 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> I don't even see salary or what your debt is as "personal information" (am Swede not in Sweden), personal information is stuff that no one else would need to know. What people earn affects not just people around you and others in the workplace but also society at large, makes a ton of sense for that stuff to be public.

In a high trust culture I get this. But what about if you're in a low trust culture with quite some "not so orderly behavior" (if you will).

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ninalanyon 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Perhaps one of the steps to a high trust culture is actually trusting people.

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MentalM 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> In a high trust culture I get this.

Wait, aren't Sweden like literally the world leader by rapes count?

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stefanfisk an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Our definition of rape is VERY broad by international standards, so comparisons are complicated.

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AuthAuth an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

your brain is cooked if you think sweden is leading the world in rape count

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etiennebausson 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Declared or actual?

There is a huge difference in most countries.

Sweden may well be one of the few countries where being raped isn't shameful/your fault for dressing too lightly/punishable by death.

	▲	rwyinuse 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yep, and this applies to several other types of crimes too. Countries with the very lowest rate of reported rape, domestic violence and so on tend to be horrible for women, because the reason for low rate is that they are too afraid to report the crimes.

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embedding-shape 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think it's the opposite, the mismatch of information availability between employer and employee makes that a low trust culture, which is addressed by making that information public instead. If it was a high trust culture, employees would trust their employer pay them fairly, but they don't, hence this information deserves to be public.

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f646993e074382f 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, it is possible to have a protected identity.

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fwn 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It seems that you can have a protected address in Denmark as well. Apparently, the protected address is even a field in the current leak.

	▲	spragl 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		According to their announcement, the names and addresses of people with protected address, were not leaked.
	▲	mrweasel 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I worked on systems that has this, it would be funny if it wasn't putting people at risk. You can see the address, and then as you say there is a field that indicated that this is a protected address, so don't leak it,... unlike the others with you're then completely fine to leak?

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p-e-w 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ah, so the “open” system is actually a two-tier system where everyone’s information is equally open except for those who are more equal than the rest.

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darknavi 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I learned this (public info) about Sweden a few years ago and as an American it really pissed me off.

In the US you can get the exact same info and probably more by simply paying a private corporation/middle man (background check services).

It seems like a huge trend in many sectors. We have the same setup as other countries, but shittier for consumers because there are lifeless leaches as middle men to make a quick buck.

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embedding-shape 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Are there no murderers, crazy ex-boy/girlfriends, targeted harrassment and spam calls in Sweden?

Of course, contrary to popular belief, Sweden is not a perfect country without violence and shit people!

It seems to be somewhat respected overall though, but I'm sure it'll eventually disappear. For the people who are stalked and what not, it's relatively easy to apply and get "protected identity" if you're affected by those things, and then eventually all those 3rd party websites remove the stale data.

Personally I solved this problem for myself by moving away from the country.

	▲	melvinroest 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Personally I solved this problem for myself by moving away from the country. Quite drastic to move away from a country for just this. Did you only do it for just this? Or was this simply one of the factors why you moved away?

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tuwtuwtuwtuw 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are. You can get a protected identity if you have that issue.

The current system has been in place around 1770. There's some pushback against it the last few years.