Who can find you on the Internet???

[Kathy (ImOut)]

I got the below email today. And made sure the website deleted my information.

I found my current address (picture of house included), the last place I lived in California (picture of house included) and the address where I lived in Florida (left Nov. 1998). They also had phone numbers and other private information about me.

They had my current house valued at over $1 Million. Oh, I wish. LOL!!!



Yesterday an Internet friend alerted me to Spokeo. It is a personal database on YOU. It posts your age, gender, home value, home address, length of residence, locator map, occupation, family info plus a slew of other stuff.

I was horrified at this intrusion and lack of privacy, never mind the fact more than half of the posted information was dead wrong. If you want your personal data removed, here's what you do.

Go to Spokeo: http://www.spokeo.com.

Enter your name in the SEARCH box. If you go by several names, check them too. Also, check for the names of your spouse and kids. Every single entry must be individually removed.

Hit Search.

When your name comes up, click on the location that matches. (Prepare to fume!)

This brings up your profile for all to see. ** COPY the URL where your information appears. **


REMOVAL FROM DATABASE

At the bottom of the page is the word PRIVACY. http://www.spokeo.com/privacy.

Once there, paste in the saved URL, your email and the code provided.

Hit Remove Listing.

By return email, they will send you a URL that you must click or paste into your browser to complete the removal process.


SEND THEM A BLAST

If you are irritated by this exposure you may want to pay them a visit via their contact page: http://www.spokeo.com/public/feedback. It's also found under CONTACT in small print at the bottom of the page.

I sent them the following:

Yours is a VERY unreliable, intrusive website. In checking what you had posted after someone alerted me to this, more than HALF of your data was incorrect.

I am contacting everyone I can think of as well as posting notices on our websites about being removed from your worrisome dis-information. You are WORSE than the Census.


Their website states to allow 1 business day for removal, which since this was Saturday, would likely be done on Tuesday. Instead, our personal information was removed within 5 minutes.

http://standeyo.com/NEWS/10_Sci_Tech/100319.Spokeo.html

 

[Smilla]

No mention of me. You had me worried there!

 

[Kathy (ImOut)]

No mention of me. You had me worried there!

Are you not in the US?

And lucky for you not being on that list.

 

[thetanic]

Wow, thanks. Surprising what I can find -- photos of friends, for example.

I've let more than a few people know. Gah.

 

[Type4_PTS]

I checked this site out when you alerted me to it and found a previous address listed along with a picture of where I was living.

Anyone who cares about their privacy on the internet should search for themselves at that site and delete every reference. For $2.95 a month it also offers anyone the option to pull photos and information about you out of many different social networking sites, 40 of them actually.

Unfortunately there are a number of sites out there that do similar types of things. Here's an article about one of them:


Web site reveals flood of personal info

Snitch.name puts a world of sometimes personal information at your fingertips.
BY MARK W. SMITH
FREE PRESS WEB EDITOR

Every once in a while a Web site comes along that presents information we all know existed in a really compelling way that makes it all seem new again.
Snitch.name does that. Billed as the "Social White Pages," the Web site offers a simple interface that searches any name and comes up with results from all over the Web in one results page.
The site combs up to 40 social sites including LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Wordpress, Yelp, criminal records and even politics campaign donations.

Snitch.name's creator, Dionysios Synodinos, 32, said he built the first prototype for himself.

"At some point it became apparent to me that I was using it almost in a daily basis and then I knew I had to make it available to the rest of the world," Synodinos, of Greece, said this morning via e-mail.

With the site pulling in close to 30,000 unique visitors a day, Synodinos said he's getting requests from people to have their names removed from his Web site.

One of those e-mails was from a woman working to develop a serious professional profile online, but was still posting intimate photos of herself on the Web.

He is quick to remind users that his site doesn't actually hold any information, it just aggregates information from other readily available sources.

"The moral here is: 'Do not post stuff you don't want the whole world to know about you,'" Synodinos said.

There's nothing here that's too revelatory. We all know information we put out there on the Web is searchable.

But seeing all these results generated on the same page can be pretty compelling -- and a little scary.
One of the Web sites the search crawled, Wink, knew my name, included a picture from my LinkedIn profile, knew that I had once lived in Jackson, that I work at the Free Press and that I had gone to Central Michigan University -- and what my major was.


One caveat, the snitch.name's search tool doesn't handle middle initials well. And with a name like Mark Smith, these are important items. Although maybe being harder to find might not be a bad thing.
Check out the site, bloggers, and let us know what you find. Any surprises out there with your Internet persona?
Contact MARK W. SMITH: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @markdubya.
http://freep.com/article/20090818/BLOG36/90817096/1388

 

[Kathy (ImOut)]

Thanks Type4 for the additional information.

 

[Type4_PTS]

Thanks Type4 for the additional information.

Your very welcome.

 

[FoTi]

I found my cousin on that site, and me (information isn't correct), but most people I looked up aren't on there.

 

[uniquemand]

I don't care about who knows what about me. I realized early in the anti-scientology days that this was the first thing I had to be prepared to give up. In order to have a credible voice, particularly in the early days, you had to say who you were, or everyone thought you were OSA or some other silly crap. I'm an extremist, and decided to swing the other way, and steal the thunder of the people who tried to out me. I outed myself, including address, phone number and SOCIAL. I really don't care. I'd rather have the trufax out there than give the possibility of OSA or someone else telling a story about me that stuck because I hadn't already "filled the vacuum".

 

[blazeofglory]

Wow that's funny, I just learned of that sight on Monday. Unbelievable isn't it?

 

[Smilla]

Are you not in the US?

And lucky for you not being on that list.

I am in Scandinavia.

 

[Megalomaniac]

If it's on the internet, then you know it's true.

Thanks Kathy!

I found out I am female, didn't like politics, and have children! :confused2:

Thank you spokeo.com! I never knew. No wonder I've had so much trouble.

Mac

 

[Winston Smith]

Thank you so much Kathy I removed a couple of references to me and my family. Appreciate it!

 

[Arthur Dent]

Thanks, Kathy.
That is creepy. I saw my house, pictures of people I don't know. And that was not even MY cat!!! I am deleted and working on the rest of my family....

 

[FrankBooth]

I never knew until looking at this site that my dad was African-American. What else has he been hiding from me?

 

[chipgallo]

Heh. I don't think these sites will replace a sneaky private investigator any time soon.

 

[Zinjifar]

hilarious. My hobbies appear to be unknown, but I'm young, single and my home is worth over a million despite my occupation as a laborer

I wish I could see my pictures

Zinj

 

[Good twin]

hilarious. My hobbies appear to be unknown, but I'm young, single and my home is worth over a million despite my occupation as a laborer

I wish I could see my pictures

Zinj

If you didn't pay so much for your house you could afford to pay the 25 bucks to look at the pictures.

 

[Winston Smith]

One of my references was bullcocky, but another had pics of my boys. In fact it had a pic of John in uniform. Fucking creepy. That is why I deleted the entries.

 

[skollie]

I'm not on the site. (I am in the USA)