Comment by mcast
1 day ago
When you search "us passport" or "tsa precheck" on Google, you constantly see promoted ad results impersonating government sites (ie passportvisarush.com or easegov.com) extracting and selling your PII (social security number, etc) from your application.
I've reported the ads multiple times, but new ones still end up being promoted. I'm sure these companies have mined and sold thousands of SSN/address/DOB info from unsuspecting users.
These are not illegitimate. They are registered 3rd parties facilitating the government. At least the ones that are on the list are not.
I got one from passportsfast or something. Highly recommended (if it's registered)
> https://travel.state.gov/en/passports/apply/get-fast/courier...
it's mostly a travesty that only the rigth mix of political apathy and corruption can get you.
also, searches for dmv related content
I hope you realize that there are legitimate third-party services which assist with passport applications and filing paperwork, generally in the capacity as a courier. Similarly, in my state and others, there are third-party services which operate as storefronts in under-served communities, that provide services as the DMV office would.
So it is unclear how you determine that they are definitely scams, unless you have attempted to trace each one through referrals or official links from the government office they are representing. Some don't have any link, though: the passport assistance services may be operating independently as middlemen. Is it worth paying someone to assist you with paperwork? Do you only speak Laotian?
In general, for any government service, there are usually middlemen who'll assist you in filling out paperwork and getting approved. That includes Medicaid and the IRS and Social Security. Of course, some of those assistors have licenses, or represent a facility. The passport agencies may not need any bona fides like that.
On the other hand, if a service is advertising "TSA PreCheck" services (and not simply intercepting your keywords to advertise unrelated stuff) then there are only three authorized partners: IDEMIA, CLEAR, or Telos. But I bet you that your keywords are simply triggering some adspam.
The underlying government services are hard to access _because_ middlemen stand to profit from providing assistance.
Do you really think that middle man services have enough leverage to convince the government to degrade their services? That is hard to believe. Its more likely that the government process just sucks and these services sprung up to fill a need. At some point it will be improved and these services will disappear.
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Doesnt help, when official government websites ( usps.com ) are on the commercial suffix, and not .gov
Yeah, USPS is a weird one.
We need a .QUANGO domain for stuff like that :p