If you're going to do this, do the whole enchilada: zip code + person's name ought to give you their whole address for 99% of the population (hint: voter records). Well, 95%, considering such records are often out of date.
The problem is this will likely spook many people - "how does this website know my street address?"
>The problem is this will likely spook many people - "how does this website know my street address?"
I requested a car insurance quote from Progressive, and the first form in the process asked for my name and street address. After that, it gave me a list of the vehicles I owned and asked which one was I inquiring about.
I know that these are public records, but it still seemed a little creepy to me.
Present a blank form with the usual fields: Name, Address, Birthdate, and so on. The user fills in whatever information they want, and the software uses multiple data sources to infer the missing information and fill in the missing boxes as the user types. Each character or field might be colour coded according the conditional probability of its being correct, or a drop down menu may appear once the number of alternatives is manageable.
Bonus points if the software can solve the inverse problem: Given an identity and partial information, what is the minimal required set of publicly available information required to establish a unique identity.
Besides spooking people out, they may not be using their residential address in the case of a shipping address and at times billing addresses. We regularly have a customers shipping address be their office and (surprisingly) it's not uncommon to see P.O. Boxes for billing addresses.
Aren't most of the electoral register lists only legally allowed to be used for certain purposes? You might run into legal trouble if you were to use them like this.
Are you aware of a voter registration database that's reasonably complete and up to date, and doesn't cost a ton of money to access? I'd love one for a current project, but my initial research seemed to indicate the only solutions were priced out of our budget (either in straight dollars, or in the man-hours to cobble together multiple sources).
The problem is this will likely spook many people - "how does this website know my street address?"