Is Your Personal Information Safe on Spokeo?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the safety and privacy of personal information on the website Spokeo, which aggregates data from various sources, including social media. Participants explore the implications of this data collection, the accuracy of the information presented, and the relationship between Spokeo and platforms like Facebook.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express concern about the accuracy of the information on Spokeo, noting discrepancies in age, family status, and property details.
  • Others highlight the ease of finding personal information about friends and family, raising privacy concerns.
  • Several participants question the legality of Spokeo's data collection practices, particularly in relation to Facebook's privacy policies.
  • Some argue that Facebook's privacy settings are inadequate and may allow third parties to access user information without consent.
  • A few participants suggest that the information on Spokeo may come from a combination of public records and social media profiles.
  • There are mentions of difficulties in removing personal information from Spokeo, with some users reporting issues with the privacy request process.
  • One participant humorously comments on the potential for misuse of the information available on Spokeo.
  • References to Robert Ludlum's novels introduce a historical context to the term "facebook," drawing parallels to the current social media platform.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally express concern about privacy and the accuracy of information on Spokeo, but there is no consensus on the legality of its practices or the effectiveness of Facebook's privacy measures. Multiple competing views remain regarding the sources of the data and the implications for user privacy.

Contextual Notes

Participants note limitations in understanding how Spokeo collects and verifies data, as well as the potential for inaccuracies in the information presented. There is also uncertainty about the legal frameworks governing data sharing between social media platforms and third-party services.

C_Dawg
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A friend of mine in the US highlighted a website - www.spokeo.com that is an online phone book but also has pictures that people have posted on their facebook pages, along with their age, education level, profession, credit score (available with membership), members of their household, home value, length of residence in the home etc etc.

I was rather started to look up two other friends in the US and see their information on this site. Needless to say, I will be e-mailing them right away.

Apparently you can remove yourself by use of the Privacy button at the bottom right hand side of the website.
 
Computer science news on Phys.org
I'm not in there. Good.
 
I am not listed except as a link through my wife's listing. Tried to remove my wife's name and got the following message: In order to prevent abuse, we must limit the frequency of privacy requests. Please try again tomorrow. Yeah, right. Of course, they 'require' your email address in order to prevent abuse. I'm sure that my email address made it into their system just fine though.
 
Awesome! This makes my second job as a burglar far more simple.
 
Borg said:
I am not listed except as a link through my wife's listing.

I had not even thought of that. I just checked my mother, father, and sister and none of them showed up. My grandmother shows up and my mother shows up listed there under her maiden name. Odd thing is that there are names listed under my grandmother as people in the household who I do not know.
 
I'm in there, but my age is off by a factor of 2, incorrectly states whether I have children, whether I have central air in my home (how would they even hope to know that?) whether I have a fireplace in my home, the estimated value of my home is off by at least 33%,

I decided to check my friend, whose age was also wrong, it incorrectly stated whether he had kids, whether he's interested in politics, and who his family is.

I'm not very impressed
 
Office_Shredder said:
I'm in there, but my age is off by a factor of 2, incorrectly states whether I have children, whether I have central air in my home (how would they even hope to know that?) whether I have a fireplace in my home, the estimated value of my home is off by at least 33%,

I decided to check my friend, whose age was also wrong, it incorrectly stated whether he had kids, whether he's interested in politics, and who his family is.

I'm not very impressed

They have my sister listed as married to our father.
 
Doesn't Facebook have a privacy law that would prevent a 3rd party from stealing information off their site?
 
I am extremely dubious of any Facebook privacy/security measures.

As it is, changes to privacy settings that Facebook quietly undertook a few months back left many people's photos accessible to anyone, and the page-owners don't even realize it.
 
  • #10
Evo said:
Doesn't Facebook have a privacy law that would prevent a 3rd party from stealing information off their site?

Maybe they have a relationship with them.
http://www.gwhatchet.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=65d53002-d568-4511-ade8-0d40866e6406"

While Facebook representatives said they do not sell users' information to third parties, the policy still gives the company the legal right to do so. The policy reads, "(The Facebook) may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship."

Given the number of times that they have toyed with their privacy settings - to the detriment of the users - there isn't a lot that would surprise me about Facebook.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #11
I've found two US friends so far, and the information is mostly accurate about them. There aren't any pictures of either of them. Neither of them is on Facebook, although both write blogs. So, I don't know where all their information is coming from.
 
  • #12
Evo said:
Doesn't Facebook have a privacy law that would prevent a 3rd party from stealing information off their site?
There are enough people that have their account set to public (or at least some of the information), which means it's not too difficult for an outsider to extract the information and put it into a database.
 
  • #13
I'm not in there.

Thank you paranoia! you were right!

More than likely the info comes from a combination of facebook/public records, and credit header info.

Facebook caters privacy rules to suit their own financial objectives. If they can make money by making the data available to 3rd parties, they will. And the changing of the privacy policy recently to expose profiles with without overt public notification, was a deliberate attempt to serve that end.
 
  • #14
Borg said:
I am not listed except as a link through my wife's listing. Tried to remove my wife's name and got the following message: In order to prevent abuse, we must limit the frequency of privacy requests. Please try again tomorrow. Yeah, right. Of course, they 'require' your email address in order to prevent abuse. I'm sure that my email address made it into their system just fine though.

I just now found out this website exists after reading this thread. I looked myself up and found that I was in the database. Apparently, I make over 250k a year. That's news to me.
Anyway, I decided to try removing myself and it worked. It said go to my email for further instructions and I went there, clicked the link it gave me and it said the search result was removed.
Doesn't Facebook have a privacy law that would prevent a 3rd party from stealing information off their site?
I think you forfeit any privacy to information you put up on Facebook.
Facebook is an antonym of the word private.
 
  • #15
According to the novels of Robert Ludlum a "facebook" is a collection of photos of known foreign spies kept by the CIA and similar agencies. A field operative is supposed to study it often in the event they spot of of them while they're on a mission. I thought it was interesting that "Facebook" adopted the same term.
 
  • #16
zoobyshoe said:
According to the novels of Robert Ludlum a "facebook" is a collection of photos of known foreign spies kept by the CIA and similar agencies. A field operative is supposed to study it often in the event they spot of of them while they're on a mission. I thought it was interesting that "Facebook" adopted the same term.

How appropriate. :-p
 

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