HomeSpeakingTestimonialsAboutNews & Media Products We Love StoreBlog

Home | Solutions Blog | Spokeo Shows Your Home with Only a Name?

Spokeo Shows Your Home with Only a Name?

True. Unless you have chosen to Opt Out (see below), a picture of your home is only one search away on Spokeo.com, even if I don’t have your address.

Check it out for yourself at www.spokeo.com. On most profiles, if Spokeo has your current address, they also have a picture of your home. It is the same as Google Street View, almost. The difference is that on Google Street View or Google Maps, you can’t easily look up someone’s address based on their name and find the corresponding picture of their home.

In other words, Spokeo aggregates your personal data in a more sophisticated way, ultimately giving users the ability to search on your name and peel back layers of your personal information. This has caused a recent web buzz on the subject and is pushing people to go on their site to remove information you don’t want to share with the world. A few months ago I posted a video about removing your information from Spokeo. Here are the steps.

1. Visit www.Spokeo.com.
2. Type in your name and click on the record that belongs to you (if it exists).
3. Copy the URL in your web browser that points specifically to your record (you should see your name in the URL, something like this: http://www.spokeo.com/search?q=Smith%20Sample#Sample:1219812367)
4. Go to the bottom right corner of Spokeo’s page and click on the link called Privacy (it’s in small, faded text). Alternatively, visit www.Spokeo.com/privacy.
5. On this page, paste in the link you copied from your personal page and enter your email address (for verification purposes, supposedly) and the security code listed. This is a case where I would use a second email account (your designated junk-email account), not your main email to avoid the build up of possible spam emails that follow. It will then send you an email confirmation where you must click the URL to confirm removal.
6. Voila! You’re information will, for the time being, no longer be included in their look up services.

Of course, this does not get rid of the original sources of data (they buy the information from your local White Pages, Government listings, probably from Google Street View), but it does make it considerably harder to aggregate all of this data in one place. Just as a word of caution – I opted out of their data base about 3 months ago when we posted the above video and now I’m back in the database. So, I am opting out again and monitoring very closely if they add me back in, at which point I will take the story to a major news organization and we will hold them accountable.

John Sileo is an an award-winning author and keynote speaker on identity theft, internet privacy, fraud training & technology defense. John specializes in making security entertaining, so that it works. John is CEO of The Sileo Group, whose clients include the Pentagon, Visa, Homeland Security & Pfizer. John’s body of work includes appearances on 60 Minutes, Rachael Ray, Anderson Cooper & Fox Business. Contact him regarding speaking opportunities directly on 800.258.8076.

Posted by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo in Cyber Data Security, Identity Theft Prevention and tagged Google Maps, identity theft expert, Identity Theft Prevention, John Sileo, Online Safety, opt out, Picture of My Home, Remove Name, Spokeo, spokeo.com, Street View, white pages.

Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.