When Sean Mulholland resigned from the New York City Police Department in 1988, he moved to Jacksonville and in 1996 opened a private investigation business.
His first office was Downtown, at 105 E. Monroe St. in the building that now houses the Supervisor of Elections Office.
Mulholland also has had office addresses along Forsyth Street, in the Blackstone Building along East Bay Street, at 1 Independent Square and on Newnan Street.
His seventh office location is a building he purchased in 2005 along East Adams Street.
He said one of the aspects of his business that has changed tremendously since he opened up shop is the proliferation of digital data.
"If you use a cellphone, mobile device or the Internet, you're leaving an electronic footprint," said Mulholland.
One of the most useful elements of the digital footprint for an investigator is social media, he said.
"There are 1.1 billion users of Facebook and 250 million people on LinkedIn. It would take you 16 years to view a month of uploads on YouTube," Mulholland said.
He said people likely don't realize how they are being tracked and who is tracking them.
"A department store can trace your cellphone signal and monitor your movements in the store. They're harnessing the data and using it for predictive analytics. If you spend a lot of time looking at bowties, you might get a coupon for bowties," said Mulholland.
Even an act as mundane as shopping for groceries leaves an electronic trail.
"Loyalty cards are the biggest tracking device going. They know what day you shop, what time you shop and what you buy," said Mulholland.
With the advances in data gathering and storage, there also have been advances in creating products designed to help people maintain their anonymity.
Software is available to mask or delete Internet usage records and email – Mulholland calls the technology an "evidence eliminator" – but the software often leaves a trail of its own.
"Some of them do a pretty good job, but they leave a trace when they're used, and that could be tampering with evidence," he said.
The bottom line is unless you live in the woods, grow your own food and never use a cellphone or computer, you're leaving a trail that may be monitored and your habits probably are recorded and analyzed.
"Most of it isn't nefarious. It's just used for marketing, but there is no privacy anymore. Society is changing," Mulholland said.
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