Spokeo – Worse than Facebook?

This site aggregates all publicly available information onto one easy, convenient search engine.

It seems to only involve Americans, from my own personal searches.

What scares me is that you can pay for membership to gain access to even MORE information on each person. :\

I did my own personal name search & a couple of friends, and nothing bad showed up for me (as I am in Canada), but I am not sure about the Americans.

I’ve gone to their privacy page and asked them to take down my info.

Let’s see what happens.

Update: In my case, my email address was removed a couple of minutes after I submitted my request via their privacy page & when I did a new search, the listing was not found.

That being said, a reader told me about this on Facebook & says that the removal process is not always respected, here’s what she wrote:

Yes they finally did remove my info, they had it all. I mean my FULL address and even my cell and each member of my family! it was a nightmare and they did remove it but it shows that you have to be super careful with what you provide to which companies. I also think their “sponsor” company is a scam just to get your money to protect your privacy.

not only do you have to remove your info from their site but also from all of the sites that list your info like bebo, etc. it was crazy but I got all my stuff removed. Believe it or not my last name is kind of common and obviously there are a lot of annas out there too so most of the stuff googled under my name is not even me!

Anyone else know about this Spokeo.com site, and are you concerned at all about that kind of specific data aggregation?

About the Author

Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver. I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year. Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about my story here, or visit my other blog: The Everyday Minimalist.