Invasion of Privacy (Spokeo)

Hello ATS,

Talk about invading our privacy!!!

I just wanted to let you know that anyone can look you up on www.spokeo.com. It's an online phone book that has a picture of you from social networks, credit score, profession, age, how many people live in the house, etc. but you can remove your name from their listing if you go to the bottom of the page and click on the privacy link.


Checked on snopes.com and it's true.
www.snopes.com...

Even if you click on the privacy link it may only take it off Spokeo for a week or two. There is no way to stop it. Spokeo just collects information from other sites. When Spokeo polls other sites it re-collects all the data again. You will have to go there every couple of weeks for the rest of your life if you want the information off.

While I personally checked this site, the information they had for me was 90% wrong, however, when I searched with my email address, several pictures of me did in fact come up.

You can go to Google earth and see everyone's house from a street view now. I guess the age of privacy is gone. Maybe Big Brother is finally here??

Your thoughts on this invasion of privacy??

wow. i just did a search on myself and it still had my old address from 3 years ago..too weird though, kinda kreepy, it even had my zodiac sign..

It's a mash up of social networking information (provided by the individual freely) and outsourced.

123people.com also does this but it is much more difficult to have one's information removed.

Welcome to datamining for their profit.

reply to post by baddmove


They had my zodiac sign wrong along with a lot of other information. They also had a friend of mine who is 40 something as being in her 70's!!

It makes me wonder what other sites are out there that we may not be aware of that may just indeed have all of our correct information along with other personal issues........how about this new healthcare reform where everything may or may not be online??

((shudder))

Is this only for the US?

I am in Europe, and though I am not a member of any of those silly social networking sites, I do have some info online on job hunting sites.

Couldn't find me though...

I just looked my info up, and found that about 60-70% of it was wrong, and looked made up, just to fill in the blanks. I also sent them a nice little e-mail about it. They need to be shut down for posting false information.

I'm not real sure how this whole third party deal works with regard to being able to access your personal more in depth ie: your credit score. Surely this can't be legal in doing so. I will attempt to research more next week but this has illegal, big brother, scam, you name it written all over it in my opinion.

Late 30s? Seriously? They're posting info that says I'm in my LATE 30S?!?!?! Okay before I was just slightly annoyed, now I'm pissed!!!

I went to the site, looked myself up then went to their "remove listing" feature, did what it asked, they it told me they have to "limit" the requests for privacy, try again some other time.
Gee thanks.
By the way, it also tells you that if you are with the government, use your.gov address for priority!
Gee THANKS AGAIN!

The final paragraph of the Snopes article is interesting: they feel Spokeo may be in the business of collecting emails from people asking to have their information removed.

Originally posted by MemoryShock
Welcome to datamining for their profit.

yeah, they charge you to use the site too. So if someone doesn't know they can just remove themselves from their database and they want to know how much information is on there they would have to sign up and pay the site to see what kind of information is on there.

Everyone should remove their social networking data that is so personal... it's so bad...