Monday, February 7, 2011

Feeling violated

I came across an interesting blog post by Frou Frou Britches today while surfing around blogland.

Spokeo. Ever heard of it? If so, why didnt you tell me about it? Apparently it's "not your grandma's phone book". How unfortunate because with you, Spokeo, I feel violated and I dont think grandmas phone book would have ever done that.

I typed in my name and searched by state and then town. There I was! My name, address, age, sex, relationship status, phone number, email, social networking sites, income, family members,  OH AND GET THIS an aerial view of my house and about how long we had lived here!!!!! MY HOUSE!!!! With approximate house and lot size and retail value!  Feeling very violated now.  There are lots of creepers out there and I don't like that such detailed information is available. You can also search for people by email, username (ummm can you say identity theft?), phone #, friends, and for just less than $3 a month you can get more details! WOW!

Fortunately there is a way to supposedly remove yourself from their database. I did it immediately and it seems to have worked. You have to give them an email address... wonder what they will do with that? Still I decided to give it a try and since I have a junkmail account (something everyone should do) I dont worry about getting more spam.
Heres what you need to do if you want to remove your information from Spokeo.

Go to Spokeo and type in your name. Click "Search".
That will bring you to a page with a map. On the left of the page is a listing of your name by state.
Click on the state you live in, then the town. You should find your name there.
Click on your name. Now copy the URL of the page you are on. ( should have your name, state and a number with the last word info)
Now on the bottom of the page in the right side you will see some tiny buttons ( about, blog, directory, etc.) click on privacy.
This page will tell you how to remove yourself from Spokeo.

This is also where you will paste your copied URL.

Thats it! Now this only removes you from Spokeo. Still, its a start.
I feel MUCH better now.
I might look into Reputation.com. Anyone used it or anything like that?

7 comments:

Katie K said...

Wrong on so many levels!!!! GRRRRR

Carrie @ Dittle Dattle said...

Hush your mouth.... I can't believe something like this exists! Okay, I guess I can but this is so creepy. I going to check it out and also see if my kiddos are on this too! Thanks for the heads up!!!

Lindsay said...

I just deleted 3 profiles for my husband alone. It showed the last three places we lived. Thanks for sharing this information.

Anonymous said...

Popped over from Dittle Dattle - Thank you SOOO much for posting about this. It is a real eye opener! I just removed 4 of my previous addresses and am working on my husbands now. they even show satellite images of my house! If I wanted people to know this much about me I would be me active on FB! Thanks again!

Unknown said...

You're all so welcome. I was shocked when I saw all my information and satellite image too!
Thanks Carrie for spreading the news.
Scary stuff.

liz@alittlepeaceofhome said...

I just tried to delete the 4 posts for my husband and one for myself - but when we received the email confirmation it asked us to go back to the site and re-enter the url ... then re-sent a confirmation e-mail asking the same thing again. did you have trouble with this too?

Unknown said...

Hmmm strange. I didn't have any problems. I did receive an email confirmation, but when I clicked the link it brought me to Spokeo and said that my listing had been removed.
Were you not able to remove the posts? If not you might want to try their customer service. https://www.spokeo.com/contact

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