Spokeo - The Latest Threat to Your Privacy

As I have warned before, be careful what you post in your Social Networking profiles such as Myspace or Facebook. Always avoid giving personal information such as birth date, middle name, address etc. Well, now there is a new information aggregator (search engine) that may put your online identity together with your offline life. Go to www.spokeo.com and do a quick search for your name. When I search for my own VERY common name the results showed My Facebook profile picture, my address, how many people lived in my home (along with links to their information), marital status, hobbies and offered my credit rating (for a fee). They were even so kind as to provide a Google Earth view of my house! I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing but Spokeo often gets erroneous results. It showed a completely unrelated person with the same last name living in my home.


The good new is that you can have your information removed from Spokeo, though it doesn't have a nice big remove me button and it takes a little effort. One caveat: On the page where you remove your profile Spokeo touts the services of a company called ReputationDefender which will supposedly protect your privacy, for a fee, of course. Just follow the directions below.

Go to www.spokeo.com. Search for yourself. Once you have located your listing you will need to copy the URL that is in the browser's address bar (see picture). To copy the URL highlight it and press the "Ctrl" and "C" keys simultaneously. The screenshots below are from Mozilla Firefox but the steps are pretty similar regardless of which browser you are using.


Look at the bottom of the page for the "Privacy" link and click on it . A new window (or tab) will open with an online form for you to fill out. Paste the URL into the appropriate field by clicking in it and pressing the "Ctrl" and "V" keys simultaneously. Next enter your email address and the "captcha" code, and click the button labeled "Remove Listing". It may take a few moments to process then the page will refresh with a statement to check your email. Supposedly there will be an email from Spokeo with further instructions, but since I still haven't gotten mine I can't provide much insight. Presumably there will be a link for you to click to confirm that you are who you say you are. Either that or I just got tricked into correlating my email address with my 'real world' information. Spooky!
One last tip though, if you don't see the email, check your spam folder for it. If you never get the email try this link http://www.spokeo.com/public/feedback and submit a request the old fashioned way.