(Post a new comment)

	ealusaid 2008-03-18 02:25 am UTC (link)
	That is alarming. And creepy. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	coyotegirl 2008-03-18 02:27 am UTC (link)
	I want to be being paranoid here, but - creeeepeeeee. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ealusaid 2008-03-18 02:28 am UTC (link)
	And apparently you have to be a member to opt out of the service? Which means giving them the password to your email account. Yeah, creepy. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	worstangel 2008-03-18 02:38 am UTC (link)
	Do not fucking want. (Reply to this)

	airawyn 2008-03-18 02:49 am UTC (link)
	Oh, god. I got an email from them saying someone was looking for me. I need to check this place out. (Reply to this)

smashingstars
2008-03-18 02:57 am UTC (link)

Someone on my IJ flist mentioned Spokeo last month, and I was the only one who thought giving them my gmail password was a Bad Idea (tm). Apparently Spokeo logs into your gmail (or Yahoo, Hotmail, whatever) and fishes around for all the email addresses therein. Then it allegedly finds all the blogs, posts, etc. associated with that email address.

I signed up with a userid instead of an email account, and searched for my own email addresses. It found nothing, despite these email addresses being used for Usenet, blogs, forums, and a million other very public things for years.

It is seriously suspicious. Google can find thousands of hits for my email address, but Spokeo didn't find a one.

(Reply to this)

	sisterelwood 2008-03-18 03:00 am UTC (link)
	Wow... I am VERY glad now that I took all of my identifying info out of my LJ profile and put it in a locked post a few months back. I know it's out there for anyone to see if it's not locked up but that's just scary. (Reply to this)

	bemysty 2008-03-18 03:15 am UTC (link)
	Because I wasn't enough of a paranoid nut on the web already. Thanks a lot, Stalkeo /o\ (Reply to this)

	spacelogic 2008-03-18 03:18 am UTC (link)
	There was info going around about this on IJ a bit ago; there's a tutorial of sorts for minimizing your [LJ, IJ, JF, etc.]'s presence if that helps. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	sisterelwood 2008-03-18 04:19 am UTC (link)
	Thanks for that. sets up up LJ and JF (Reply to this)(Parent)

	smashingstars 2008-03-18 11:32 am UTC (link)
	That's great, thanks! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	camilla 2008-03-18 03:29 am UTC (link)
	o.0 That's even worse than Facebook giving out all of your info to companies whose 'special sparkly contests' you want to participate in. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	tinsolitus 2008-03-18 08:47 pm UTC (link)
	That is why you won't find a single app on my page. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	t_boy 2008-03-18 03:50 am UTC (link)
	Hideous. (Reply to this)

	the_sun_is_up 2008-03-18 04:50 am UTC (link)
	Ick, ick, do not want indeed! D: (Reply to this)

	solelyfictional 2008-03-18 07:49 am UTC (link)
	I've minimized my lj presence, but is there anyway to stop it nosing about on facebook and photobucket? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	shaggydogstail 2008-03-18 10:42 am UTC (link)
	It uses your email address to search by, so I suppose the most effective way to prevent services like this finding you AT ALL would be to have a dedicated email account that you only use for signing up for services, and always keep hidden. I'd guess that changing the email address for other sites would keep it out, but I lack the l33t tech skillz to say for sure. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	snakeling 2008-03-18 03:01 pm UTC (link)
	I think an easier way would be to change emails every time you sign up for something. To do that, you'd need your own domain and email server, then create a catch-all email that you actually read and don't give out, and create one-time emails that redirect to the catch-all, like facebook@mydomain.com, livejournal@mydomain.com, etc. That way you're never connected. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	foresthouse 2008-03-18 07:07 pm UTC (link)
	Oooh. I LIKE that idea (given that I have a web server). :) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	moonjaguar 2008-03-18 10:17 pm UTC (link)
	Gleeps! That's gotta be the first Trixie Belden icon I've ever seen. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	foresthouse 2008-03-19 02:29 pm UTC (link)
	Heh - yeah, I don't think Trixie icons are that common. For some reason, even though I've had a couple of other LJ themes, Trixie was the one that stuck, and now I've had a Trixie theme on LJ for about...5 years? Apparently there are several people who identify my username immediately when they see the Trixie icons. Or so they tell me. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	ecchaniz0r 2008-03-18 10:46 am UTC (link)
	ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew, Aaaand ew. That's really twitch-inducing. (Reply to this)

	lil_miss_stfu 2008-03-18 02:26 pm UTC (link)
	How odd... An email search doesn't bring up anything. The only way I could find my LJ was to search for it by URL, and yet my email address isn't hidden. I'm gonna count myself lucky I think. (Reply to this)

	solar_type_star 2008-03-18 04:25 pm UTC (link)
	This is... quite timely. The other day I received an "unsolicited notification" (no kidding!) from another website called "Tagged". The small print said that if I didn't want to keep on being "notified", I had to go to their site and introduce my email or somesuch. I thought that was invasive, but Spokeo just takes the cake. (Reply to this)

	jillybinks 2008-03-18 05:35 pm UTC (link)
	I had the special joy of getting all sucked into Spokeo before I realized what it is. The site is invasive and creepy. Plus, they seem to be breaking a bunch of US and international privacy laws and also practicing what I think the Federal Trade Commission calls deceptive practices. I've been compiling more information in a couple of posts at my journal here and here. (Reply to this)(Thread)

solar_type_star
2008-03-18 06:05 pm UTC (link)

I was reading your posts just now (thanks to a link from a link from a link, etc.). Thank you for discussing the legalities of the site. I'm interested on my rights as a EU citizen regarding this kind of thing, and this reminds me that it's about time I get a little bit educated on that.

It's awful, because now I have this morbid curiosity to sign up to see what does it say of me (like

ships_harry in this post), but that would be definitely stupid knowing what I know now. Plus, I don't want to bring down my contacts with me, I'm very wary of sending them anything that could be constructed as spam normally.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

jillybinks
2008-03-18 06:15 pm UTC (link)

You know what I've been doing? I mean, aside from the already having given them my information. I've been starting a new gmail email account that has no connection to me and no contacts, joining under that email address and then searching for myself. That might be a good start to see what comes up without putting your data or others at risk.

Also, you can get more information on the Privacy website for your particular country. Each country in the EU has their own Data Protection Authority whose sole job is to protect your privacy rights. Based on my studies, they are very much breaking at least some of the laws in the EU.

Just google your country and "data protection authority" and you should be able your DPA's site. I think that I specifically refer to two laws in the posts [the EU Data Privacy Directive (95/46/EC) and the Electronic Communicatations Directive and the E-Privacy Directive (2002/58/EC)] and you can google those two laws as well. Since each EU country has established their own versions of these laws, you will need to check out their legislation specifically to find out your specific rights.

Also, as always, I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on the internet, but I do read many of these laws for my job and so I kinda know what I'm talking about. But it's always best to talk to legal folks in your own area.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

solar_type_star
2008-03-18 06:38 pm UTC (link)

Thank you very much for the detailed advice. I'm also taking a look at Wink, which may not be that bad. Still, once it's found a person (I found my Facebook profile through it), it creates a profile page for the person and asks you if that person is you and if you want to claim that information as being yours by registering. I don't know what's required to "confirm" that it's me once you're registered, so the possibility exists that other people could impersonate me using that site.

And don't keep on beating yourself up for having been fooled. :) I'm sure they've made it so very tricky on purpose.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	krazycat 2008-03-18 11:18 pm UTC (link)
	I've been starting a new gmail email account that has no connection to me and no contacts, joining under that email address and then searching for myself. Good idea! I did the same, and thankfully couldn't find much. But what I found was disturbing enough, and damage control is in progress. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	criticalcricket 2008-03-18 07:51 pm UTC (link)
	Just wanted to add that you can sign up without giving the service access to your email. They have an option for people without web-based email to create a login. I did that with a web-based sock email and found that the service really can't find much of me. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	solar_type_star 2008-03-18 08:41 pm UTC (link)
	I think I'm going to use both techniques (dummy e-mail and alternate log-in) for more security. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	wieimmer 2008-03-18 09:37 pm UTC (link)
	Ew, holy cow, ew! (Reply to this)

	moonjaguar 2008-03-18 10:21 pm UTC (link)
	This weirds me out more than Frienditto ever did because the people behind FD didn't go around pretending to be doing anyone great favors. (Reply to this)