Consumer advocates and law enforcement officials in several Front Range communities are renewing warnings for residents to be wary of Internet businesses selling information that is readily available for free.
The advice comes after thousands of little white paper squares began appearing on front doors in communities including Fort Collins, Louisville, Littleton and Lakewood.
The fliers – printed in capital letters and filled with exclamation marks – trumpet the recent arrival of a sex offender to the neighborhood and urge residents to protect themselves and learn the criminal’s identity and home address by visiting a specific website.
The trouble is, the information the website peddles is already available for free.
“This is just a scare tactic to make some money,” said Louisville police Officer Patrick Fitzgibbons. “Our best advice is to use caution and not go to a website to pay for something that local law enforcement will give for nothing.”
The website offers to inform users – for a small monthly fee – via e-mail any time a registered sex offender moves into their area, information already provided by police agencies nationwide, often online.
That’s not all. People who visit the website are led to believe they can access the information only by providing their e-mail addresses and ZIP codes. So even if consumers don’t buy into it, they’ve unwittingly provided their e-mail address, which the website operator can then sell to direct marketers.
The result: mountains of spam.
“There’s no benefit to doing it in our opinion,” said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which updates its website list of sex-offender addresses each day. “It’s not just about not spending the money, but not giving out your e-mail address.”
The scheme isn’t new. It happened in Douglas and Arapahoe counties last year and has had a variety of incarnations across the country the past several years.
“Why would anyone want to pay for something that’s already free?” said Susan Liehe, spokeswoman of the Denver/Boulder Better Business Bureau. “These are little more than efforts to prey on people’s fear and anxiety thinking it’s the only way to protect themselves.”
The business may be legitimate – as long as it provides what it promises – but taping the little squares to doors may not be allowed in some areas. Two people supervising the distribution of the sex-offender notices were arrested in Golden this month for posting handbills without a permit.
The U.S. Department of Justice provides sex-offender addresses and photos at www.nsopr.gov for every state and region, as well as by name.
Colorado’s sex-offender website – sor.state.co.us – also lists the local police agencies that provide additional information online. Not all agencies do, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a list residents can pick up. Call and check.
Colorado sex-offender lists on the Internet do not include the names of juvenile offenders, Fitzgibbons said, but “if you come into the station, you will have all that in our printed list.”
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-954-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.
How to reach us: Have a consumer tip or beef? Tell us about it. consumertips@denverpost.com
Sex-offender information for free
How do I find out if a sex offender is living in my community?
Go to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation website at sor.state.co.us, enter the security code at the bottom of the page, then click on “search for offenders” on the subsequent page. Scroll down to your city and click “search.” No need to enter the other information. Or visit the federal site at www.nsopr.gov, click the “I agree” button, enter the security code and enter the town or ZIP code.
How frequently can I ask law enforcement for a new list?
As often as you’d like. Consumer experts say you shouldn’t pay money to someone for information that’s already free and you should never provide credit-card information to any website unless you’re sure it is legitimate.
