Hacker News Reader

>Our wedding consisted of signing some paperwork at city Hall.

They are constantly checking public records like this and that's how they would have found out. Still a little creepy though.

View on HN

There are records, of course, but it doesn't seem like marriage records are public records in my state. The state says nothing on their website about obtaining these records other than going to city Hall in person with your ID and that's only to obtain your own marriage certificate. I think they also said something about responding to requests about genealogy requests but only for very old marriage records. There's not an online database of marriages like there is with everything else public in my state. Nothing publicly available for public consumption that I could see.

I can't see if my friends are legally married but I can easily see what they paid for their house.

Divorces are public though and very easy to find on the court's website.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com