I'm not sure how significant this is, as there are many sites that aggregate and re-sell personal info. And this is clearly not another version of the Verifyhim thread below. But one of my kids just informed me of a new site called spokeo.com that claims to have aggregated all kinds of personal info, starting with the usual phone and address stuff but also including pictures from Facebook, credit score, home value, etc. You can remove yourself from the site by searching for your name, then clicking on the "privacy" button at the bottom right of the page and following their instructions. Yes, the info is only available for a fee but, still, if someone wants to screw with you it's way too easy. Perhaps someone more familiar with such sites can comment on how significant this is. But I thought it was worth alerting the board.
especially if you live in MA. My kids even come up in this search, albeit the Barnstable they mention does not seem to be the one on Cape Cod. So I ask...WTF is with this stuff on these sites ??
It is completely legal in the US to aggregate personal information and sell it. Not much you can do about it. If you take yourself off the list, it only stays off for a year then it goes back on the list. If you want to be off the list then, you will have to delist every year. It is becoming hard to do because numerous sites are popping up and you find them by accident.
Posted By: inicky46
I'm not sure how significant this is, as there are many sites that aggregate and re-sell personal info. And this is clearly not another version of the Verifyhim thread below. But one of my kids just informed me of a new site called spokeo.com that claims to have aggregated all kinds of personal info, starting with the usual phone and address stuff but also including pictures from Facebook, credit score, home value, etc. You can remove yourself from the site by searching for your name, then clicking on the "privacy" button at the bottom right of the page and following their instructions. Yes, the info is only available for a fee but, still, if someone wants to screw with you it's way too easy. Perhaps someone more familiar with such sites can comment on how significant this is. But I thought it was worth alerting the board.
The site is a bunch of junk designed to return a lot of results, most of which have no relevance, so as to upsell you to buy reports (for which they surely get a referral fee). Nice way to generate a little cash while doing nothing but preying on paranoia and stupidity.
It is returning nothing a Google search would not return, and because you cannot add any qualifiers, such as birth date, hometown, or address, it actually is a lot less useful than using a search engine. But that is definitely intentional as they want to show you lots of results in order to convince you to pay up for the details.
Am I the only one that found verifyhim to be full of junk, too? I assume a premium membership would allow one to filter the results and just see ones that really do apply (in my case, that seemed to be none), but the public search results are a useless mess, again apparently designed to return as many results as possible, mostly wrong, but an impressive list. Shocking how many guys in my state with my (fairly common) first name have been reported, and there is one guy who appears to be a real asshole, but none of them share my phone or email, or even hometown, so I do not see how anyone could determine they are me, or I am them (play "I am the walrus" here), or we are all together.
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