Online snooping gets creepy

[Dion]

What makes these sites controversial is that they gather all this information without your permission. The resulting profiles can be embarrassing or simply wrong. And getting those profiles removed or changed can be impossible.

http://www.time.com/time/business/ar...id=feed-biz_ad

An estimated 30% of all Web searches are aimed at finding people, according to industry statistics, and upstarts like PeekYou, Pipl, Spock, and Wink are vying for a piece of this potentially huge market. These free sites work by scouring the Web for any virtual footprints you might have on MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Yahoo!, Flickr and elsewhere, and then creating a fresh profile that organizes all that information on one page.

When Nazira Sacasa sent me a press release for a new clothing boutique late last month, she didn't know that I would launch a full-scale web search to learn everything I could about her. But I needed a victim to test out the new breed of people-search services on the web, and a paid publicity seeker seemed like fair game. And so, after just a few minutes of clicking around, I had found Sacasa's MySpace page, her age, home address and what appears to be quite a lot of information about her family in Florida — all without using Google or any other popular search site.

[Hemi-Cuda]

well i tried searching for myself on those sites listed above, and the only one that actually had me was Pipl but they had an outdated address and phone number, so i'm not too worried

[Maritime Q-Scout]

I tried those sites, and apparently I don't exist

[sadora]

It all comes down to how careful you are when using the web. I tried searching for myself and found an old email address and my profile on imdb, non of which had any other information such as phone number or address only because I have never put that information online. On some websites I don't even use my real name because I'm paranoid of something like this happening. So just make sure you're careful with what information you make available.

[jam26]

I find more info about myself through Google than these sites.

[Dion]

I put my brothers name in one of the search engines mentioned, and his business profile, phone number, and email address appeared all neat and tidy on one page.

I tried googling his name with no success.

[getbak]

About a year ago, an American kid with my name was killed in Iraq. Now, if I search for my name on Google or anything, it mostly comes back with a bunch of memorial sites for him (it's kind of eerie seeing your own name on a memorial page).

Of all of those sites, only one came back with any real results about me, and it was a link to a Yahoo profile I don't even remember creating, with an old @Home.com email address that I haven't used since Shaw dumped @Home.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

I tried the pipl site and it looks to me like there is nothing on there at somene could not easily get anyway.

It came up with my address and phone number (both available on Canada41.com) and a bunch of articles about a team I coach (the first things that come up on google when I google my own name.

[worth]

One site found my Amazon account somehow.

The last one found a few articles I wrote online and the company I work for webpage, because my name is on that page. So I guess if someone wanted to find me all they would have to do is find my work site, which lists the address and they could hop in the car and find me no problem.

I'm pretty careful about leaving my phone number and address off public pages like facebook.

One guy I used to work with has his work phone, cell phone, home phone, work address, home address, college, high school, and pretty much every other piece of id you can imagine just short of his banking information. There are pictures of his kids on the site too for everyone to see. That's something I just wouldn't do myself.

[REDVAN]

I couldn't find anything worthy on those people search sites- only EXACTLY what google knows about me: a quote I made in the paper one time, and the fact I am an executive on a student club that is sanctioned by the regulatory body haha. Nothing dangerous.

[icarus]

There is someone with my name who lives in Tuscany, and that's what popped up on Pipl. The weird thing is that when they scanned my alumni card at the U of C library a couple weeks ago that person's address and phone number was in their records. Maybe U of C is linked in with Pipl.

[AaronSJ]

Only one of the four sites above "knew me"... and not very well (name & age only).

However, Google's first two entries were for CalgaryPuck articles that I authored a few years ago... glad to see CP on top. The third entry was an obituary for a namesake that was recently killed in a motorcycle accident (a little creepy, as getbak said above).