I found an intriguing blurb in the New York Times today (Nov. 9, 2025). In the 1920s or ’30s, “anyone anywhere could purchase a 15-cent brass key tag from The New York Times with a unique identification number engraved on it, and then attach it to one’s valuable belongings. If those lost keys had a tag, there was a reasonable chance that they would be recovered. . . The Times helped a college student in Connecticut rescue her dog, which was wearing a key tag on its collar, in 1929. Four years later, a set of keys was returned to The Times after it was lost off a fishing boat in Florida.”

Today, reuniting lost property with the owners is often the work of data companies that use identifying information, often obtained from public records, to reunite abandoned pensions with beneficiaries and long-forgotten safe deposit boxes with the descendants of the owners. These data companies, sometimes pejoratively referred to as “data brokers,” also assist in locating victims, witnesses, fugitives, and individuals who have failed to fulfill their child support obligations. Unfortunately, at times, governments attempt to limit data sharing between these companies and their users. The dog rescue and key location would have been impossible if New York State had banned such sharing 90 years ago. The stakes of missing pension payments or a predator are much higher today. Data companies perform a public good just like the “if lost, please find me” tags of yesteryear.