Ian WhiteYou may be a victim of privacy violation: Instructions inside
January 8th 2011 20:55
Category: No Category
Okay, here's the deal. Spokeo.com is basically a search engine that aggregates information pertaining to individual names, email addresses, and phone numbers from online public sources such as phone books, real estate listings, and government records, plus profile entries from websites like Facebook, MySpace, Amazon.com, LinkedIn, Flickr, and many others (the Spokeo site lists upwards of 50 potential data sources).
Similar "people search" services include Pipl, ZoomInfo, ZabaSearch, Radaris, and Intelius.
It can indeed be shocking to see how much information can be dug up about you in 15 seconds — your home address, your marital status, religion, hobbies, names of friends and family members, personal photos, a satellite image of your home, home value, even your estimated income and credit score.
Just as troubling is the fact that no one fact-checks the assembled data, meaning it can be partially or wholly incorrect.
The thing is, if Spokeo can find it, the info is publicly available and can be found online by anyone, with or without the convenience of a Spokeo.com.
The website does provide a "Privacy" form whereby you can delete your individual listing (note: some users report this is easier said than done), but don't miss the critical point: simply removing your search results from Spokeo.com doesn't prevent anyone from accessing the data by other means.
To protect your personal data on social networking services, you must either refrain from providing it to sites like MySpace and Facebook in the first place, or adjust your privacy settings on each website accordingly. Also, if your phone number and address are listed in the White Pages, that information is publicly accessible online, as are some government records (accessibility varies by state) and real estate listings.
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You can remove yourself by searching your name, copying the URL of your page, then going to the very bottom of the page and clicking on the Privacy button to remove yourself. I just checked it out to see if it's true and sure enough, they've got my name, address, etc and you have to sign in to get all the other details. I'm personally appalled by this and will be investigating the legality and making sure I have as limited information posted online as possible, but this site should not exist.
Similar "people search" services include Pipl, ZoomInfo, ZabaSearch, Radaris, and Intelius.
It can indeed be shocking to see how much information can be dug up about you in 15 seconds — your home address, your marital status, religion, hobbies, names of friends and family members, personal photos, a satellite image of your home, home value, even your estimated income and credit score.
Just as troubling is the fact that no one fact-checks the assembled data, meaning it can be partially or wholly incorrect.
The thing is, if Spokeo can find it, the info is publicly available and can be found online by anyone, with or without the convenience of a Spokeo.com.
The website does provide a "Privacy" form whereby you can delete your individual listing (note: some users report this is easier said than done), but don't miss the critical point: simply removing your search results from Spokeo.com doesn't prevent anyone from accessing the data by other means.
To protect your personal data on social networking services, you must either refrain from providing it to sites like MySpace and Facebook in the first place, or adjust your privacy settings on each website accordingly. Also, if your phone number and address are listed in the White Pages, that information is publicly accessible online, as are some government records (accessibility varies by state) and real estate listings.
source
You can remove yourself by searching your name, copying the URL of your page, then going to the very bottom of the page and clicking on the Privacy button to remove yourself. I just checked it out to see if it's true and sure enough, they've got my name, address, etc and you have to sign in to get all the other details. I'm personally appalled by this and will be investigating the legality and making sure I have as limited information posted online as possible, but this site should not exist.
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Comment by A.F.
Do you think my employer violated privacy, because they distributed personal emails?