What Info Does SPOKEO Have on You?
Be stingy about your personal info online!
The post I just read from a friend’s blog bears repeating.
For your own online privacy, you’ll want to read this and see how to remove the information Spokeo has on you…and they’re selling it. That’s right, they’re making money on your personal info. They have pulled info from the County Assessor’s office files, placed a satellite photo of our home and property with it, given you the square footage with how many toilets included. They tell everyone you who you’re married to, how old both of you are and what your income level is. You’ll have to pay to know the income level though. They’ve collected hobbies, entertainment and music choices off your social network sites. How much did you say on your Facebook profile? One suggestion for that…never put the year of your birthday on anything online. The more info you put out, the easier it is for identity theft and places like Spokeo. To remove a listing from Spokeo, you’ll need the link to your profile. Simply click on your name in the left column, and copy the link address in your web address bar. You can request to remove a listing here: http://www.spokeo.com/privacy. Then, just follow the steps. You’ll need to insert your email address so that you can verify that you want it removed. Use an old email address that you never check any more so that if they decide to spam you, you won’t be bothered by it.
Spokeo limits how many listings you can remove per email address AND per day. Try and exceed their limit and you’ll get this, “In order to prevent abuse, we must limit the frequency of privacy requests. Please try again tomorrow.” They’re probably hoping you’ll forget to come back.
A big shout out THANK YOU to Angie Vinez http://blessedbeyondwords.com/ for revealing this information. She’s keeping us safe!
Have you looked at your privacy settings for Facebook lately? Do you think putting the birth year out to the public does no harm?
Are you giving out Too Much Information?
I was horrified to find out how much information they had on my husband and I. There was even a shot of one of our old houses and you could even zoom in to see the license plate on our old van. Thank goodness we no longer have that van or live in that house, but how scary is that? And how long has it been out there?
Crazy world we live in. Thanks for spreading the word to your readers. I want as many people as possible to know about this!
Angie,
Since we’ve been here for the last 16 years, I seems they took our home photo in the last two years. It makes you wonder how many identity thefts are getting their info online (from this site)…just like the home thieves. There’s a site devoted to that called, come rob me dot com.
For sure don’t set up the ‘where are you located now’ feature that Google put out. Keep them guessing! I don’t spend a lot of time obsessing over criminals, even though it seems that way since we’re discussing this. What I try to do is stay safe online and offline.
Angie, you had a place you let your daughter meet other kids online when she was 11, 12, or 13? You wrote a posting on how safe it was and how parents could keep watch over what was going on. Can you share your post’s url with all of the readers who would want to read it?
I was quite alarmed the first time I heard about spokeo. I checked it out for myself and laughed at some of the info. Yes, there were some accuracies, but not many. The bottom line after a little research, I learned that companies like spokeo just compile information that is already out there for the public to see. Blocking info from spokeo is a good idea, but there will be more companies just like it that come along and do the same thing. The more permanent approach (but much longer) is to go to the source of the information and deal with each item separately.
It is so important to be aware of the info out there online that can compromise our privacy.
Yes, there are a lot of places who scrape sites for info. But what do you do about the county assessor putting your info online for the world to view?
For sure you can keep your Facebook profile private by not putting out your phone number, your date of birth and any other info, like where you were born online.
I remember when people used to put their social security numbers on their checks!