Starting a Belgian SPRL- very intrusive- sensitive personal info is published

[civillib]

Belgian notaires publish the following sensitive and irrelevant data when someone forms a new company:

* Address of private home where the director resides
* Directors nationality
* Directors full name (first middle last), and date of birth
* Directors place of birth
* Company HQ address, even if it matches the personal residence (although can be avoided for €600-1100/yr)

It's understandable that the government itself would have this information, but very disturbing that the law requires directors to compromise their privacy and be made vulnerable to identity theft by this intrusive degree of exposure.

This information is all aggregated together, and forever made available to anyone with google access. It's not difficult to imagine some of the abuses directors are open to:

* Future employers can simply use google to get an applicants age, and use age-discrimination in the initial hiring phase
* Future employers can discriminate on the basis of nationality in the initial hiring phase, rather than simply confirm work authorization later on
* Identity thieves are freely given details that are often used by banks to confirm identity
* Business competitors know where a director lives
* Terrorists can easily harvest a list of American or British business owners, for example, and gather addresses for where they live.
* Ex-lovers (stalkers) are given easy access to the home address

The question is, what can someone do if they want to start a company, but require a reasonable amount of privacy? Is this impossible?

Do BVBA's or GCV's require the same disclosure?

[SueEllen]

Belgian notaires publish the following sensitive and irrelevant data when someone forms a new company:

* Address of private home where the director resides
* Directors nationality
* Directors full name (first middle last), and date of birth
* Directors place of birth
* Company HQ address, even if it matches the personal residence (although can be avoided for €600-1100/yr)

In the UK Companies House stores this information on Directors:
1. Address
2. Nationality
3. Full name
4. Company HQ address

The reason for this is so bend Directors can be chased by members of the public unfortunately it's also been used for fraud.

[civillib]

In the UK Companies House stores this information on Directors:
1. Address
2. Nationality
3. Full name
4. Company HQ address

The reason for this is so bend Directors can be chased by members of the public unfortunately it's also been used for fraud.

Obviously to government needs to know this information to deal with criminal companies, and to make it available if a court needs to subpoena it for a plaintiff. But there's no certainly reason for the general public to have unchecked access to this information.

Another brit tells me this information is not public. Are you saying otherwise?

[cojak]

Yes she is. If your company's registered address is your home address then it's published.

[civillib]

Yes she is. If your company's registered address is your home address then it's published.

She wrote that the private residence (1) is published in addition to the HQ address (4), in which case it makes no difference if they are the same or different, the personal residence is out there either way (assuming sueellen is correct).

[Clare@InTouch]

She wrote that the private residence (1) is published in addition to the HQ address (4), in which case it makes no difference if they are the same or different, the personal residence is out there either way (assuming sueellen is correct).

Not necessarily.

You have three different addresses for a company:

The registered office address - public record
The director's service address - public record
The director's home address - not public record

The service address can be the home address, or the registered office address (or anywhere else for that matter). If the latter, it's possible to not have your home address publically available. Many people have the service address the same as the home address, in which case it's public record.

The service address option only became available recently, so if you have a company that was set up more than a year ago then you will likely have the directors' address available on old documents, even if it's since been changed to a new service address.

Director's date of birth is also on public record.

[SueEllen]

She wrote that the private residence (1) is published in addition to the HQ address (4), in which case it makes no difference if they are the same or different, the personal residence is out there either way (assuming sueellen is correct).

Nope I wrote "Address". *Clare* has explained the differences as I couldn't be bothered to.

Anyway what I meant is most of the information you are complaining that the Belgian government wants is available to the UK public to download for a few quid from Companies House.

Someone on here has reported that their details have been used for fraud and the only way could be via information from Companies House.

Even then there are other legal (and illegal) ways you can find people's addresses in the UK i.e. via the electoral register. Added to the fact lots of people give out information about themselves via google, facebook etc.