Information Super Highway

continues to take control............. 

I was searching for a home phone number on the 411.com white pages online phone book (no I don't know where my hard copy phone book is, not sure I receive one any longer) and was directed to the spokeo.com website.  I was shocked (but, really should I have been?) at what was available simply for a click.  I was looking for a phone number and the site produced the phone number, pictures from Facebook, the value of their home, age, race and more.  Curious about my own information I accessed the spokeo site again and low and behold tons of information about me popped up.  Upon further scrutiny I discovered that some of the information was either incorrect or skewed. Glad I don't have a Facebook page, not that it matters, because these sites will scoop up whatever they can from various sources and post it anywhere they please.  There is no fact checking going on or permissions for releasing information being requested or granted.

I took the suggestion of a friend and selected the Privacy option on the Spokeo.com website.  I opted to have my information removed and when I checked the next day, my file had in fact been deleted.  Yeah I know, it has been deleted from 1 site out of how many?

I made some screen shots of the step by step process, it's not difficult to do but the site does not spell out how to remove your file. I don't want to clutter my blog with the screen shots so if you have difficulty locating the Privacy option on the spokeo website, send me an email and I will forward the steps on opting out.

According to David Emery's Urban Legends Blog
http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2010/04/07/spokeo-com-scam.htm
By David Emery, About.com Guide to Urban Legends

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, 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 form whereby you can delete your individual listing (though some users report that 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 same 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.