Privacy

Privacy was Originally Posted on January 16, 2011 by lavarock

SO you post a blog entry about yourself, or a trip report. That information is available to those who search and read. Someinformation about you, such as your taxes or value of your house are also out there because they are pieces of “public information”.

A troubling issue are sites such as SPOKEO.COM which scour the internet looking for your pesonal information, then create a public profile of you, including a map to your house (in my case, much of the information was wrong).

Here is Spokeo’s privacy info:

Spokeo aggregates publicly available information from phone books, social networks, marketing surveys, real estate listings, business websites, and other public sources. Spokeo does not originate data or publish user-generated content. Rather, Spokeo indexes third-party data in ways similar to Google or Bing. Spokeo does not control or maintain any aggregated third-party data, and therefore cannot guarantee its accuracy or currentness. Spokeo does not publish directory listings for children under 18. Please read our full privacy policy.

Spokeo cares about data privacy. We have partnered with ReputationDefender, a leading privacy protection agency, to help you control and remove your information on hundreds of other people search sites. Click the banner to get started:

That link takes you to a site that charges you to remove data from the internet.

Spokeo charges $35 a year for you to see your information (which I would never pay), but someone else may pay for a subsrciption.

How do you feel about this? I think it is sleazy and have searched for myself, my Mom (who is also listed even though she has never posted on the internet and has no idea what it is). My Sister is also listed. I asked to have all entries removed, although they seem to have only removed 2 of the 5 so far. Perhaps thousands of citizens are hitting them up for removal requests and they are swamped.

Perhaps you are outraged enough to have your own info removed, just to make a point. That is up to you!

Realize that much of this info is publically available, however doe sit need to be THAT easy to go to one place to get it? Especially when you were not even asked. Removal takes it off their public pages, but who are they selling it to behind the scenes?