Internet Safety and Privacy
There’s a site called Spokeo.com that’s a new online USA phone book that makes available personal information: everything from pictures you’ve posted on Facebook or the Web, your approximate credit score, the address and pictures of where you live, your income, your age, your relationships… You can remove yourself by searching your name, finding the page for yourself, and copying the URL. Then go to the bottom of the page and click on the Privacy link to remove yourself. It’s hard enough to maintain privacy these days, who needs all this personal information floating around in cyber-space!
If you changed your name when you got married, be sure to check under your maiden name as well…
Spokeo just collects information already available in a fancy way–it’s an aggregator site. Removing your listing there doesn’t do much, except confirm they’ve got a valid email address for you. You can read a full write up about it on Snopes.com which investigates all sorts of internet rumors: https://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/spokeo.asp
This post was very helpful. I had heard about Spokeo before, but didn’t know how to get my information removed. Thanks!
Also check out zabasearch.com it has past addresses, anyone you have lived with, etc… great if you’re a stalker or a security clearance verifier… not so good for the average joe or jane. Spoken doesn’t always have fully accurate information but that could be equally bad. Also be sure to cross reference yourself and your loved ones under usernames, emails, and phone numbers …. its amazing the information they get when they cross reference it all … and do they really need to know all the dating sites you belong to? Or used to? They don’t put a date on the information and that can come back and burn you too … if you’ve been in a relationship or married and it shows you are still active on match.com … so cya ladies!
Thank you for that. That is really creepy. I had heard of it, but hadn’t bothered to figure out how to remove myself.
Thank you for that post. I think I will mention it on my blog as well. It’s really crazy these days with the internet privacy – I guess there is no such thing…
I wasn’t comfortable giving them my email either, but I’m still not a fan of the sites that collect all the info for people to find easily who otherwise may not find it. Zaba search seems to link to intelius, which requirse a faxed copy of an ID with your name, address, and date of birth. That I’m not doing… And Pipl profiles seems to offer no opt out I can find. It seems somewhat fruitless. But I still like to limit what I put out there and comfort myself that most of that info is avail. on everybody.