I see lots of friends over on Facebook getting all in a tizzy over their personal information being displayed on spokeo.com. Most are worried that their privacy is being invaded. The general concern is that their information is searchable on this site, and that they didn’t authorize it. Well, I hate to break this to you, but… you actually did. But how did I authorize it, you ask? And how do they get that information?
How does Spokeo.com get that information?
In a nutshell: all of the information that you see on spokeo.com is publicly available already. This is information that is found in the phone book white pages, real estate listings, government documents and records, and most importantly… all of the public profile listings on your favorite websites like Facebook, Yelp, MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn, Amazon… and the list goes on.
How did I authorize it?
Two words for you: privacy settings. Every site that allows you to create an online profile (like the ones listed above) also allows you to adjust what information is made available publicly. The problem is that most of them, by default, have many details set to be public. It’s up to you to keep that info from becoming readily searchable online.
Example: I have an account at flickr.com, and on that account I have my full name listed as my “screen name”. I do this by choice because I make money on the site as a photographer and Flickr is a great way to market myself. A simple google search for my full name shows my Flickr profile as the fourth item in the results. Is this an invasion of my privacy? No. I put my own full name on a publicly searchable item on Flickr, and thus I’ve authorized my full name to be found quite easily via a web search.
You see all of these photo thumbnails here on my web site? All of those are publicly viewable, so they will show up in the Spokeo.com search results. I posted them on Flickr as viewable by everyone… and that really means everyone.
This personal information can be found by anyone on the web. The ease of finding the information is dependent on how adept they are at searching the internet. But, Spokeo.com just does all of that legwork for them. And guess what? They are not the only sites that do this sort of thing; Pipl, ZoomInfo, ZabaSearch, Radaris, and Intelius. Technically, these sites are not doing anything illegal as the information they are presenting is freely and publicly available to everyone.
So, what can you do about it?
You have a couple of options.
- Don’t ever share anything on the internet, especially on any social networking sites. This is a bit drastic, but you’ll be guaranteed to keep your private information private. Of course, keep in mind… you’ll have to be unlisted in the phone book, and never do anything that has to do with the government.
- Get to know the privacy settings on the sites that you use and make the necessary adjustments accordingly.
To lead you in the right direction, go take a look into the privacy settings on Facebook. If you see anything that is set to “everyone”, you can consider that information available publicly and searchable on the web. I always tell friends to modify every Facebook privacy setting so that “everyone” is not selected. And an important one is the Public Search Results; Do you want people to find your Facebook profile page via any internet search engine? If not, then keep this box unchecked. I’ve sent this link out to folks before, and is great for understanding your settings on Facebook: 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know. The locations of settings and verbiage on Facebook may have changed since this article was written, but if you spend some time you’ll be able to find everything you need to set.
Oh yeah, and why do these sites exist at all?
Simple: money!! They are trying to get you to pay them money to find more information about the person you are searching for. Just go to Spokeo.com and search, then click on the “see full results” button. You’ll be promptly directed to their Purchase page. But, it’s likely that you will not find any more detail about that person than what you can find with a simple web search engine.
Very important to know this: Completing the form on spokeo.com to remove your information will not remove the information from where spokeo.com found it. To do that, you’ll need to do one of the two options I’ve noted above.
