From Suzi:My co-worker sent this message to all of us at work. The synopsis below is hers; I haven't really had time to check this site out, but it appears to be worth investigating. I did try searching for myself on the site, but I think my "two names" (Suzi and Suzanne) confused it. Post a comment if you try this out yourself!
"This website culls the information about individuals from public records, social networking sites and so on. You can remove your listing if you wish. Mine (before I requested it be removed) was somewhat accurate – this publicly accessible listing had my address and a picture of a neighbors’ house (I said it was somewhat accurate), my age, gender, race, indication of how many people in the household (including children,) and listing of interests (for free) as well as access to pictures (for a fee).
The website is
www.spokeo.com. The link to remove your information is:
http://www.spokeo.com/privacy The site was very slow at responding. (There seem to be a slew of emails going around about this site, so maybe they are being inundated?)
A good write-up in plain language explaining the system it uses, the “whack-a-mole” method of trying to block all these aggregators, and the possible lack of success at requesting removal (though it worked for me) can be found at:
http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/spokeo.asp (look under the “Origins” section of the page)
