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Your Web Presence

January 7, 2011 by  

Your Web Presence

Maintaining your privacy in today’s technological age is, at best, a difficult task. It requires constant effort to remain below the radar. But, if you have a presence somewhere on the Internet — say through a social site like Facebook or LinkedIn — it is impossible.

There are organizations that scour the World Wide Web for information on individuals in order to organize it in one place and make it available to individuals and other organizations — both for free and for a fee. One of these is the site, www.spokeo.com.

It markets itself as “Not your grandmother’s phonebook,” and it may contain your photos, biographical information, email addresses, financial data and other information that is publicly available. Go there and search for your name and you’d be amazed at the information that may appear.

However, spokeo™ will remove your listing from its free portion upon request. After you locate your listing, copy the URL from the top, click on the privacy button at the bottom and paste in your URL. This won’t completely remove your information that’s readily available, but it will remove it from one public source.

Filed Under: Freedom Watch, Hot Topics
Bob Livingston

is an ultra-conservative American who has been writing a newsletter since 1969. Bob has devoted much of his life to research and the quest for truth on a variety of subjects. Bob specializes in health issues such as nutritional supplements and alternatives to drugs, as well as issues of privacy (both personal and financial), asset protection and the preservation of freedom.

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  • bob wire

    I consider the very suggesting to “GO Check” as bait.

    much like the “call this number and remove yourself from the call list”

    Yea ~ Right!

    Sorry ~ I’m just bent that way.

    Unexplained free tickets to the theater tells me someone wants to know “when and where” I’m at. Maybe they would like to visit my house or do me evil. ~ I don’t need no “free tickets” ~ if that’s something I want to do, I will.

    Maybe some people have found a good use for Face book or twitter ~ as far as I’m concerned, there is “NO ONE” that I want to know my movements and travels. It seems more like a girly thang for attention whores or someone that’s very socially engaged.

    That I bother to share my thoughts, is as revealing as I wish to be.

  • http://FarTooMuch.Info Russ Lemon

    I went there last night. It shows me as the son of my wife. It shows my daughter as married [she has never been married]. My second son shows up as living with me and also with his wife in San Diego. The name of my third son is wrong. However, the picture of our house is correct, but old. And I have lived there three times longer then they said. I refuse to pay to check the other data.

  • Old Monkey

    Strange, I wan’t there at all. Though not as invisable as I used to be, someone would have to put in effort to find me. My biggest visability is Classmates.com which place me within a 50 mile radius using Google.

  • Vicki

    I found over 500 of “me” scattered across all of the “lower 48″ states so I’m thinking I’ll not be over concerned :) yet.

    • Johor

      Sadly, you are already too late. Bush2 saw to that and O is going down the same path. Even he has no choice, POTUS or not POTUS.

  • jeanelane

    Can’t worry about this. I have my fb settings set as private as I want. So much is public info. As long as that doesn’t include my SSN!

    • libertytrain

      Check my post re Facebook above, you may have missed these 3 spots as well. I thought my settings were as private as could be as well.

  • Raggs

    All and good for the so-called president to tap into your private life without any reason or cause…

  • Anthony

    SC – tell me you’re seriously not surprised that someone wants to profit from a thing they are in charge of…..

    Folks – I AM on BookFace. I use it regularly for a whole host of reasons. About 50% of the time, my FB friends keep me apprised of the latest info/intel there might be related to GEO-POLITICS.

    Example – have you been checking about all the dead bird/fish sightings?
    There have been at least FIVE that I’ve read about – 3 in & around Beebe AK.
    The Beebe AK sightings are the most worrisome – fault line exists there.

    I use FB to stay in touch with friends, family, co-workers, etc.
    For the most part – I see it as not too worrisome.

    HOWEVER – you do have to maintain your Account/Privacy Settings with some semblence of intelligence. Let’s not keep pretending it’s always someone else’s job to take care of your personal life. That would be ANTI-PersonalLiberty, would it not?

    I do not do TWITTER, MYSPACE, YAHOO, MSN or any of the Other options, with the exception of maybe BLOGSPOT. Even that is in rare usage – more for practicing web design.

    The irritation I have about BookFace – is where Goldman Sachs is (has been) sticking their nose into the background semantics of it’s inner workings – laying a lot of money in front of people, etc. It’s also TRUE that the originator of BookFace is jewish. Whether he’s Ashkenazi or sephardi …. the latter being what is considered blood jews. I lean towards him being ashkenazi, since he’s favoring the BIG money. The History of FaceBook is a good read. What you can’t tell, is where did he get his seed money. To order the storage space necessary to handle such a large mechanism – TAKES MONEY. Real Money. He was in College at the time… so, answer that query if you can.

    There are a host of OTHER avenues where peoplpe can and do garner info on you – this includes EBAY. So, it’s just a matter of watching your own back.

    JMHO

    • independant thinker

      “Example – have you been checking about all the dead bird/fish sightings?
      There have been at least FIVE that I’ve read about – 3 in & around Beebe AK.
      The Beebe AK sightings are the most worrisome – fault line exists there.”

      Me thinks you need some new facebook friends.

      1. Beebe is not in AK (Alaska) it is in AR (Arkansas).
      2. There has been ONE dead bird event in Beebe the dead fish event
      was 125 miles west of Beebe.
      3. Beebe is not on a fault line. The nearest fault is
      at least 150 miles to the east (New Madrid Fault).

      • libertytrain

        You are correct – but if you Google it, Beebe Ak – you will find that most sites over 900,000 are writing it incorrectly as AK – doesn’t say much for the smarts of these sites – however it is interesting than only about 300,000 had it correct. Sad state of affairs these days.

    • Johor

      Did Mr Z. misname his social networking baby? TWOfacebook would have been much more to the point (incidentally – not my original idea!) I ‘StumbledUpon’ it quite by accident only to learn that Mr Z. was not particularly interested in privacy issues. That was smell No.1. Then I discovered that Facebook is sticky like a spiders web to flies. An application to unsubscribe is responded to with a statement that the process takes two weeks and that if you sign in, even accidentally to any 2Facebook site, you are back on board. Unsubscription has to be started all over. That was smell No.2. Finally, on the few occasions when I have seen Mr Z. talking on TV I began to understand why, useful or not to some 500,000,000 people, 2Facebook stank.
      The latest news about the US government applying muscle to break Twitter’s privacy protocols is even more discouraging. With 2Facebook they shouldn’t have any problems. Mt Z. is there waiting for them with open arms.

      • libertytrain

        One thing I just noticed on Facebook, and my “privacy” settings were set to what I thought were the fullest, is at the bottom of your privacy settings page on Facebook:
        Apps and Websites
        Edit your settings for using apps, games and websites.

        Block Lists
        Edit your lists of blocked people and apps.

        Controlling How You Share
        Learn more about your privacy on Facebook.
        You need to find the clickable section of each of the above three and adjust your privacy more. I had never noticed these before because they are “below the fold” on my screen and so I never saw them before.

  • s c

    Apparently, those who control the internet are determined to use it to their advantage. In the process, privacy is fast becoming a thing of the past. I suggest that if those wannabe geniuses want the internet to be a tool that works to their benefit, then we owe it to ourselves to do to public figures (especially politicians) what would-be controllers are trying to do to us.
    Either the internet is a functional two-edged sword, or else Americans can expect a full-fledged police state. We MUST fight fire with fire.
    Google has already betrayed the American people. Groups like the ACLU can’t be counted on to do the right thing, and so we have no choice but to defend ourselves against all who pretend to care about us and wouldn’t know what’s right if they owned the most comprehensive manual in the world.
    Et tu, you two-legged scum.

  • Cheryl

    When I attempted to access our info, it will not allow me to view it. An error message appears stating that it is “done with errors on the page” which translates to there is nothing on the page. Interesting. Will try again at a later time. Thank you for the information!

  • Alice

    There WAS NO Privacy link anywhere on the site! What’s up with that?
    Bizarre how far off they are with their information (what I could access without paying for it) though

    • libertytrain

      Alice at the very bottom of the site, in small print, is the word Privacy, click on it and it should work. Did for me.

  • photo lady

    I just followed the instructions to remove and it went right through. Thanks for bringing this to our attention!

  • Mike

    I looked myself up on Spokeo.com and it caused me to laugh at the loads of misinformation presented there as fact. I apparently am my own son and am decades younger than my calendar tells me. It has several children living at home who moved out years ago. One listing on me has me living in what appears as a warehouse and another shows me living next to a gas station somewhere. I checked my dad out and he has a middle name that is unknown to anyone in the family.

    I would count this web site as a complete piece of junk.

    • Robin from Arcadia, IN

      It may be ‘a piece of junk’, but some will think it’s gospel.

  • Debbie Blackwelder

    I just went to the Spokeo website through the link you provided (thank you, by the way–I’d never heard of this site and was dismayed at how much information was there on me and my husband.) I attempted numerous times to use the Privacy link to remove our information–and it was just a scam! I entered their required information on myself and typed in their provided code–and received a reply to this effect: In order to PREVENT ABUSE (can you imagine?) we are limited as to the number of requests we can process. Try again tomorrow. What a sham! I’m going to contact my Congressmen–this is ridiculous!

    • libertytrain

      I had no problem getting my stuff off, but I tried to do the same for my husband and it said it couldn’t use the email address again and I needed to put in one that he (doesn’t/ he doesn’t do email only uses my email address when he does) uses. I gave up but may try again.

    • s c

      Debbie, good luck in contacting those who supposedly represent you in Washington. If you take a look at how many people responsed to this topic, what should bother you most is the idea that PRIVACY is NOT a huge issue with many readers/responders.
      In effect, many people are ignoring the importance of free speech (yes, the 1st Amendment). America is a shadow of what it should have and could have been.
      I’m afraid that the monsters who control public education have done so much damage for so long that the free speech clock is ticking and it is doomed no matter what we try.

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