Reply to: Horrified : every UK company balance sheet one-click away !

[realityhack]

Cease.

[northernladuk]

Thank you, I know that, it's not my point.

My point is if I'm saying to someone : "my name is blablabla blobloblo, I'm a consultant / developer / plumber / artist / contractor / self-employed / whatever...", if they google "blablabla blobloblo" they can know straight away the wealth belonging to me which is kept in my ltd.

If I'm wrong please explain to me why in more details.

a) You are not wrong
b) It is how it is for every single company in the UK and I would imagine most countries
c) Stop ******* moaning. It is how it is. If you don't like it **** off somewhere else.

You want to moan at the companies that show this info on the web not us. You are boring now.

[DannyR]

You simply don't get it -
THE COMPANY IS NOT EQUAL TO YOU.

Thank you, I know that, it's not my point.

My point is if I'm saying to someone : "my name is blablabla blobloblo, I'm a consultant / developer / plumber / artist / contractor / self-employed / whatever...", if they google "blablabla blobloblo" they can know straight away the wealth belonging to me which is kept in my ltd.

If I'm wrong please explain to me why in more details.

[SueEllen]

??? I'm happy for anybody to know that I employ myself and I have no employee other than myself. I'm not happy about anybody knowing my name and that I am self-employed being able to also know my company net worth. (But I repeat : I am happy to give this information to whoever I sign a contract with which involves my company).

You simply don't get it -

THE COMPANY IS NOT EQUAL TO YOU.

If you don't understand that simple point you are heading for trouble.

[DannyR]

Just checked out the final net worth of an infamous voice-2-text message company

Googling : [44,497,000 company check] was enough to get me the name of the "infamous" company (and all its info) !

@SueEllen :

Regarding the takeover you are mentioning, all the infos / conditions required should have be written down on a contract which would have invalidated the deal if the infos / conditions were not met. This has to do with contractual laws, not privacy.

I don't want to have to lie about having employees or not, or having to lie about anything. To a question that I don't want to answer I just want to be able to say "it's not your business" (obviously only if there is no contractual relationship involved where the information required is part of concluding the deal).

People who are going to rip you of or not pay will do that regardless of your business model.

When your business model is donation / pay what you want / pay what you can / freemium / etc... the notion of "ripping off" is not as clear cut. Some people might partly base their decision to donate on the perception of how wealthy or not is the provider of the digital product.

Your examples are all silly so thank you for not giving us anymore.

That's not a nice thing to say.

Your main issue is that anyone you have a relationship with will find out that you only employ yourself.

??? I'm happy for anybody to know that I employ myself and I have no employee other than myself. I'm not happy about anybody knowing my name and that I am self-employed being able to also know my company net worth. (But I repeat : I am happy to give this information to whoever I sign a contract with which involves my company).

[SueEllen]

I have no problem with a client / agency requesting company financial information to check if there isn't anything dodgy.

I have a problem for example with giving away my real name to a date, that date googling my real name then immediately (without even having to pay for it) know that I have lot of cash and then that date thinking "Oh this person has lot of cash, let's make the most out of him / her".

You forget that you and the company you run are separate legal entities.

No-one, apart from HMRC and unless you tell them, knows exactly how many employees you have.

Years ago I worked for a company A who took over a company B who mislead them about how many employees they had Company A saw that company B had a very healthy balance sheet and saw lots of employees in their two offices.

Unfortunately they didn't actually ask company B how many of these employees where permanent employees. So instead of the 25 people they thought company B employed there were only 3 permanent employees.

Or having a landlord doing the same and thinking "Oh this tenant has lot of cash, he / she won't mind if I increase his / her rent by 20% next time."

To most normal people a business is more than one person. So you just need to casually mention your "employees" to the nosey landlord.

Or trying to monetize a digital product on my company website using a donation or freemium business model and having customers think : "this person has already lot of cash, no need to send him / her money for his / her product." Or having competitors thinking : "Wow this person is making lot of cash with his / her digital product, let's clone it."

People who are going to rip you of or not pay will do that regardless of your business model.

I could give you hundreds of examples more or less trivial / penalising / dangerous.

Your examples are all silly so thank you for not giving us anymore.

Your main issue is that anyone you have a relationship with will find out that you only employ yourself.

[SunnyInHades]

Just checked out the final net worth of an infamous voice-2-text message company (voicemail translated and re-typed by humans listening to wav email attachments) ...

Net Worth : £-44,497,000

Ouch ! No hiding anymore from companycheck.co.uk

[DannyR]

I have no problem with a client / agency requesting company financial information to check if there isn't anything dodgy.

I have a problem for example with giving away my real name to a date, that date googling my real name then immediately (without even having to pay for it) know that I have lot of cash and then that date thinking "Oh this person has lot of cash, let's make the most out of him / her".

Or having a landlord doing the same and thinking "Oh this tenant has lot of cash, he / she won't mind if I increase his / her rent by 20% next time."

Or trying to monetize a digital product on my company website using a donation or freemium business model and having customers think : "this person has already lot of cash, no need to send him / her money for his / her product." Or having competitors thinking : "Wow this person is making lot of cash with his / her digital product, let's clone it."

I could give you hundreds of examples more or less trivial / penalising / dangerous.

I'm usually a very friendly person but I hate to be taken advantage of, penalised or being swindled. And having such info so easily available for everybody is the door open to all of this. Call it paranoid if you want but it does not prevent me to have lot of friends and to make friends easily and trust people that I know well so I would not call it a "Personality Disorder".

[Clare@InTouch]

If I decide to hire a builder to build the extension to my house, I want to be sure he's not going to do a bunk with my money. To get reassurance, I can download his accounts and see his balance sheet, which gives me a snapshot of his business. If he has bank overdraft and no assets, I'm not going to give him a deposit!

That's what I expect of a genuine business, and I fail to see how it's a bad thing.

If you don't want your balance sheet to be public then go umbrella, or self employed. You will pay more tax, but that's the trade off.

[northernladuk]

Regarding : some countries outside of the EU (usually in small islands) treat private companies as... private, so this should not be a problem in these countries.

[/quote]
I wouldn't bank on that in the current climate.

3) Quite a few people have used the word "paranoid". As Andy Grove would say (although in another context) "Only the paranoid survive".

Any of the following sound familiar to you?

What is Paranoid Personality Disorder?
PPD is a type of psychological personality disorder characterized by an extreme level of distrust and suspicion of others. Paranoid personalities are generally difficult to get along with, and their combative and distrustful nature often elicits hostility in others. The negative social interactions that result from their behavior then serve to confirm and reinforce their original pessimistic expectations. Needless to say, those with PPD are unlikely to form many close relationships and are typically perceived as cold and distant. They are quick to challenge the loyalty of friends and loved ones and tend to carry long grudges (Dobbert 2007, Kantor 2004).

It seems lots of people do not care at all about their privacy in this forum and elsewhere :

4) I am wondering why then they prefer using a pseudonym rather than their real name in forums ?

5) Also I wonder if they would be happy to let me go freely in their home, install a webcam in their toilet bowl and have a google query on their name present the realtime webcam live footage accompanied with a "best-of <their name> in the loo" available for free to everybody in the world to see ?

6) Would they also be happy to have all their personal bank account records, all the websites they ever visited, all the google queries they ever made, all the forum messages, emails, text messages they ever sent, every personal data you can think of, available to everybody ?

7) And in the future would they be happy to have no choice but have all the realtime and historical textual and visual detailed record of their brain processes, thoughts and actions available for everybody on the planet to search, query and replay for free and forever ?

Personally I think it's enslaving, dehumanizing and wrong specially if no choice is given.

Also privacy is like security (actually it's one of the pillars of security) : it obviously cannot be completely infallible it's just a question of how much effort people / organizations are willing to put to break it.

Thank you in advance for your enlightening answers.

Cheers.

What the **** are you on about? I am finding you hard to get on with and you seen cold and distant

[DannyR]

Thank you all for your enlightening answers

I have now the following questions and answers :

1) Would the abbreviated accounts (suggested by several people in this thread) reveal the company balance sheet ?

2) SueEllen says :

My current and my last agency plus some of my direct clients will not engage companies where the main person they are dealing with is doesn't hold a key position i.e. director in the company they are dealing with.

If I'm correct, in case of an umbrella, the agency / client deals with the umbrella representative for all the administrative stuff even the contract signatures so what's the difference for the agency / client to deal with an ltd nominee director ?

Can I ask you which sector of activity you work in ?

Regarding

I think all EU countries put limited company information in the public domain and lots of other countries do as well.

: some countries outside of the EU (usually in small islands) treat private companies as... private, so this should not be a problem in these countries.

3) Quite a few people have used the word "paranoid". As Andy Grove would say (although in another context) "Only the paranoid survive".

It seems lots of people do not care at all about their privacy in this forum and elsewhere :

4) I am wondering why then they prefer using a pseudonym rather than their real name in forums ?

5) Also I wonder if they would be happy to let me go freely in their home, install a webcam in their toilet bowl and have a google query on their name present the realtime webcam live footage accompanied with a "best-of <their name> in the loo" available for free to everybody in the world to see ?

6) Would they also be happy to have all their personal bank account records, all the websites they ever visited, all the google queries they ever made, all the forum messages, emails, text messages they ever sent, every personal data you can think of, available to everybody ?

7) And in the future would they be happy to have no choice but have all the realtime and historical textual and visual detailed record of their brain processes, thoughts and actions available for everybody on the planet to search, query and replay for free and forever ?

Personally I think it's enslaving, dehumanizing and wrong specially if no choice is given.

Also privacy is like security (actually it's one of the pillars of security) : it obviously cannot be completely infallible it's just a question of how much effort people / organizations are willing to put to break it.

Thank you in advance for your enlightening answers.

Cheers.

[zedAccounts]

Hi all,
I've recently discovered with horror that some companies provide the balance sheet of my own ltd, as every other UK ltd, on the web for free for the whole world to see (you used to have to go through the process of registering and paying a few quids to do that). A simple google search on my company name (or even my own personal name !) provides my company balance sheet data in the first result page, just one-click away ! Personally I find this horribly intrusive and it sickens me.

I would advise submitting the minimum information to CH, i.e. abbrev accounts, filling in only the mandatory fields.

ZED.

[SueEllen]

1) Is it legally feasible ?

Yes

2) Would it be a problem for agencies to be billed by a UK ltd whose director is a proxy and whose main shareholder is an offshore company rather than a private person ?

Yes.

My current and my last agency plus some of my direct clients will not engage companies where the main person they are dealing with is doesn't hold a key position i.e. director in the company they are dealing with.

3) Using that legal structure would my name stay completely invisible from the UK ltd company info and operations

Nope.

If someone can be bothered they will be able to trace your company and find out you are the director in the holding company.

I think all EU countries put limited company information in the public domain and lots of other countries do as well.

4) Any other potential flaws you can think about ?

It looks damn dodgy and someone is more likely to investigate you because you are trying to hide your information.

[VectraMan]

Try: www.companiesintheuk.co.uk

They show a nice picture of your house using Google street view (assuming your company address is your home address)

That one's never heard of My Co. Only being going for 7 years.

The director one found me at my old address and a dissolved company I was a director of 10 years ago, but no mention of the current or more recent plan B ( now disolved ) company.

[SarahL2012]

Try: www.companiesintheuk.co.uk

They show a nice picture of your house using Google street view (assuming your company address is your home address)

Like this website! Showing my neighbours house though - but does seem to have been taken on a lovely sunny day!