Spokeo's Consumer Profiling Prompts Complaint to FTC

[slgrieb]

From today's Washington Post, here is a story about Spokeo, which bills itself as an Internet directory. If you do a name search for yourself, you're likely to find not just your name, address and phone number listed, but additional information such as estimated value of your home, the quality of your neighborhood, and so much more. Much of the info is inaccurate.

One small error in my reply to the WP article is that you can find the Help link on the home page, and so you don't need to go to the Join page to remove yourself.

[Guts3d]

Scary! I am afraid to see if I am there....

[slgrieb]

You should be scared. The site shows things like a Google map of your home's location, and a Google Street View if available. When my wife did a search for her step mom, all of that showed up and we even had a lovely view of her new car including the license plate. Trust me, you're likely to be appalled at much of the information displayed.

[Guts3d]

I sure am! Luckily, they got my street view wrong, and I am a Gemini, so they got that wrong as well. But according to the site, my home is worth 1 million or more, so I want to sell it to them as fast as I can. I'll even give them the Gemini discount.

[BOB IROC]

removed myself from there months ago and informed all my friends and family to do the same. Crap like that should be illegal. They say they get it all from public records and what not but it is still not right.