Data security becomes one of the most important issues in our society. There are many online platforms existing in our social network including facebook, linkedin, google plus, and others. We can definitely update our information to these websites, and we can choose if we want to hide the information or share to other people. However, some human search engines do obtain our information without our permission. For example, Spokeo.com is one of the largest human search website around the world. This website collects everything we have such as our full name, credit score, address, phone number, family, income, properties, and etc. This is one of the outcomes that data mining brings to us. We are barely to protect our privacy although the data they collected is not always accurate.
Of the 15 people Foxnews asked to research themselves on Spokeo.com, 10 reported inaccuracies in their report. Of those, three said the information was mostly inaccurate, while the others noted only minor discrepancies, such as an incorrect address or the wrong number of people in their household. Only five said the data was completely accurate.We may want to ask, is it illegal? I am sorry that I have to this kind of activity is legal because they collect your information from public. You can easily retrieve other people's information for a very cheap price.
What can we do now? Remember, you can remove your profile from
http://www.spokeo.com/privacy.
There are still many similar website such as
Pipl, ZoomInfo, ZabaSearch, Radaris, and Intelius. What can we do to protect our privacy? I think the best way is not sharing your important information online.
References:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2010/04/07/spokeo-com-scam.htm
http://blog.hawaii.edu/neojourno/2011/09/19/spokeo-raises-privacy-concerns/
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2011/01/19/spokeo-cyber-security-warn-threat-privacy/
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