Got this on the job email courtesy of Los Angeles County Sheriff but figured everyone should know it. http://www.spokeo.com/ Seems to be some type of search engine on people. If you put in your name you can search through and find yourself, your information, address, and picture of your house. Found my stuff, my wifes, my parents, and of course all our houses current and previous. Already taken mine and my wifes out. Make sure to name search a maiden name as well and all your previous addresses if need be. At the bottom of the page is a privacy button. They say it takes 24 hours. We will see...... (can we sticky this for a few days?)
So, in other words, it just scrapes existing databases and matches them up with Google Earth, thus saving people time from having to do it on their own. (On the day that sick bastard got busted for having the girl and her kids kept in the tents/tarps in his backyard for over a decade, the first thing I did when I heard about it on the news [and before any of the reporters seemed to think of it], was hit the CA sex offender registry, find the guy's address, then keyed it into Google Earth to see what the place looked like.) Privacy's dead, the internet killed it, get used to it. Oh, and in punching my real name into, I do not exist according to it.
How do you get them to remove your stuff? I actually find it a little funny because they got a lot wrong about me and my father. Of course I'm also pissed off, because I know exactly where they got my information from, since only my University and the credit card companies it's sold my information to spells my name the way they do on this site.
Apparently I hunt deer, am in a relationship, and live in a house I've never seen before in my life. All news to me!
Scroll all the way to the bottom and you will see in small letters some links. Click on the privacy one to remove your stuff.
My parents townhouse (listed as a single family home) is over a million too. Mine is only worth $500k. The bad thing about this is so much is wrong because of idiots entering the data that someone could get in trouble for something they've nothing to do with. Of course if the data gets so mangled then this site wouldn't be worth anything.
I looked myself up and the data is so f'd up as to be worthless. Nowhere in there is a real picture of me or anyone in my family, but I wish my wife looked like the girl in the picture!!
Well, my university claims that it was perfectly legal to publicly release my address, phone number and age, although I could make them not do that by filling out some form. Which would have been nice if they'd actually said so off the bat. To me the law should make it so that the presumption is that all information be kept private, instead of the opposite.
There was plenty of accurate info and lots of inaccurate info as well. It wasn't particularly accurate in my case, but I see nothing but bad juju in publishing people's creditworthiness right where anyone can look it up. The only online thing worse than this I've seen lately is: http://foursquare.com/ This is the most moronic thing I have ever seen. Idiots actually "check in" with this thing and publish where they are and what they are doing, which will also publish it right to your Facebook and Twitter. You know...announcing when you aren't home and are busy so it's the perfect time to rob you. Or helping a rapist plan the best area to lay in wait for you. It's insane. Phonelosers actually looks for people who do this and calls them at their locations to hopefully scare them off the service.
My wife and kids will be disappointed to know that I am single and have no kids. They have become non-persons. The information is very sketchy and mostly wrong. Comes from being out of the country most of the time, I guess. There isn't much to know about me that is available in the States. What little bit of it is true is very much outdated (other than my name and age). But what's interesting is that, although the data is old, my dad was not on the list of people with that name, even though he had the same name I do. BTW, the only thing it knows about my personal interests is that I am "not interested in politics"! A similar thing for France would have known just about everything about me... Checking other people with the same name, I discovered one guy who, apparently, lives in an empty field!
You guys seemed to have broken it, as it gives me a page load error. I also doubt it works for Canada.
^ It was getting slower and slower as I checked various names (some of them fictitious, or deceased) and I finally had to shut it down because it was blocking everything on the computer from working. Too many Wordforgers on it at the same time, I think.
Some of my information was wrong as well. But enough was right to be downright scary. So yes, I told them to make it private and did the same for my folks. they still had my dad alive.... Maybe I should have left that one in and let someone get a real shocker when they come to find him.
Hmm... I am a 20 year old female and I'm currently in a relationship. I've only completed high school, yet I have a 1 million dollar home! The only thing on there that is spot on is the horoscope, ironically. The description of a typical Capricorn is eerily similar to my own personality.
apparently I'm from Dallas which I've never visited and I'm due to give birth in three months. dam my girlfriend is going to be pissed still I'll be the first guy to give birth
