I’m usually pretty liberal when it comes to online privacy issues. I’ve even done the unthinkable and willingly lifted the privacy settings on my Facebook page so that everyone can see most of my content. But I do have a limit.
Spokeo.com is one of many sites popping up now that aggregate personal information from public social networking sites. You can search a person’s name and find photos, his/her age, address, phone number, relatives’ names, home value, salary, and much more. Granted, some of the information is behind a paywall, but the fee is minimal – just under $3 per month.
But don’t worry, I’m about to tell you how to remove your information. Hang in there. First, though, to help myself feel less like a hypocrite, I need to explain why I think Spokeo is inappropriate while agreeing with the seemingly forced openness of recent Facebook rollouts.
On a social networking site that a user willfully joins, all of the content shared is done intentionally. Many argue that the content shared on a given site should only be accessible to the community approved by the user. Mark Zuckerberg disagrees. So do I. Instead of Facebook being a collection of millions of small communities that are blocked off from each other, it is much more powerful as a single community in which hundreds of millions of people participate. When everyone contributes to one large community it opens the door for many positive things, but just like sharing a room with multiple people, there will have to be some restructuring in the way of privacy. The solution is not to disband, but to rethink. Allowing members of the Facebook community access to your profile lets them participate in your debates, invite you to new things, introduce you to new people. Remember, in this community you still have the option to share only what you wish.
Spokeo, and sites like it, are taking advantage of the participants in online communities. What does aggregating personal information without consent benefit anyone who doesn’t want to use it in a negative way? After all, the only people that would need to look for the information are those that aren’t already connected to the person they are stalking on Facebook or other social networking sites.
Let the information remain open within communities to the extent that the participants choose, and disallow third parties the option of aggregating that information without, in some way, contributing in a positive way to the community. I have to conclude that Spokeo, and the host of other “people search” sites, adds no value to the internet.
Ok, rant over. Here’s how to delete your record from Spokeo.com:
- Search your name from the site’s homepage and navigate to the profile that matches your information.
- When the box pops up on the map, click the yellow button that says “See It All”
- Copy the URL of that page
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Privacy” link (or click here)
- Enter the URL, your email address, and the captcha
- Login to your email and click the link to confirm your email address
- Your data will be immediately removed.
Special thanks to Erin Gerber for passing on the information about how to remove my personal data.
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