It is like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped —
Trying to remove your personal information off sites, such as Spokeo.
Spokeo has a tagline that it’s Not your Grandma’s phonebook.
True – unless Grandma was one who liked to share your personal business.
Here is some of the information Spokeo has.
- Your name
- Your street address
- Your phone number
- Your email addresses
- Your marital status
- Your age (basic information has something like “late 50s”)
- If you own a house
- The approximate value of your house
- Pictures of where you live
- Names of your children
- Your hobbies
- Your social media profile
For a fee, you can get specific data.
Closing the Barn Door
The problem is the information is out there.
Every time you share information online in profiles, it is often there for the taking. There are other public records like government records and real estate listings where others obtain your information.
The following instructions won’t change that.
But, here is a step-by-step for removing your information from the Spokeo site.
Go to Spokeo.com
1. Enter your name.
2. It returns everyone with your name. Select your state, then select your city and state.
3. Select your specific address. This is a sample of the profile it brings up.
4. Copy the url at the top of the site for your specific profile.
5. Click on the Privacy tab in the lower right hand corner.
6. Paste your url in the box marked “URL,” add your email address, put in the Captiva code and click on “Remove Listing.”
7. You will receive an email with a link that says “Click here” to remove your name from the listing.
It’s an uphill battle to protect our privacy, but hopefully this will help with one more site.
What suggestions do you have? What other sites are you aware of?
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Wow! This is scary. Thanks, Cathy!
I know. Isn’t it, Lori? I have said any security we do now is too late because it’s been out there for years. But, we’ll fight the good fight.
Thanks for stopping by, Lori.
Oh my gosh. Thanks for the heads up Cathy. I had two listings in there, so removed both. I also removed my mom’s two listings. It’s completely absurd that they’d collect so much incorrect information and release it as fact like that — especially given how many in the population would be clueless about this kind of thing in the first place. So thanks for spreading the word.
It looks like they limit you to two removal requests per email address, and 4 total in a day — assuming that’s based on your IP address. They say it’s to prevent abuse. Yeah. Right. The only abuse going on is the way they’re publishing collections of private info that shouldn’t all be searchable in one place and how they get so much of it wrong in the process through what amounts to little more than guessing.
Hi Jenn:
Huh, I did not know about the limit on the removals. Thanks for letting us know. LOL-that they say they are concened about abuse-hello-what do you think is going to happen with what they collected?
I did my Mom’s and mine (which was under my CA address) and decided to write up the post so I could let more people know.
Glad it helped, Jenn. Thanks for sharing the info. about the limits.
Wow – that is truly insane! I guess it is just American’s so far on this site though? Do you know of other sites like this?
Hi Danielle:
I wasn’t sure if it was just Americans. Thanks for letting us know. Some others are People Info sites that typically have a fee associated with them for information beyond the name.
I haven’t researched these but there are pipl, ZoomInfo and Intellius.
It says they are simply aggregating publicy available information from other sources. So, removing your info from display on their site, does not remove it from the sources, AFAICT.
You are correct, Robert. I noted that in the post –
Every time you share information online in profiles, it is often there for the taking. There are other public records like government records and real estate listings where others obtain your information.
The following instructions won’t change that.
What this will do is just not make it as convenient to have all this information in one place.
It’s a definite uphill battle. I appreciate you stopping by.
The problem is that they’re simply aggregating information and trying to get people to pay for it as though they’re offering something that isn’t free anyway. Even that I could understand if they were aggregating useful info. But they’re not. They’re both making it easier on the stalker crowd and publishing a lot of false information (which could have a negative effect on your own image, especially if you have a personal brand a share a lot of information about yourself with your target market, blog audience, etc.).
Here are just a few examples of errors:
1. Old addresses — if they have you listed under more than one address, the information is inherently incorrect on at least one front. Both my mother’s and my listings were split into two. For me, the older one was from more than 7 years ago, so there’s no excuse for that kind of inaccurate and outdated information.
2. False ages — they make poor guesses to ages in some cases. They listed my youngest brother as being 6 years older than he is (a big gap for someone so young).
3. False residence associations — For my old address they listed that I lived there with my parents. I haven’t lived with both parents since I was 5. And i didn’t live with either of them there. I lived there with an ex (not listed as a resident oddly enough on their site). For my newer address they said that my youngest brother lives with me. he doesn’t, and he never has. And with the false age they listed for him they make it appear as though we would be a married couple rather than siblings anyway — kind of creepy, and not something you’d want people presuming if they’re old friends looking you up.
4. Way-off home values — They did get it right that I rent. So then why do they list an estimated home value as though I own instead? It’s not even an average home value for the area (about $200k lower than reality around here). Their numbers are pretty much pulled out of thin air.
That site is wrong on so many levels. Phone books are a opt-in service where you have the ability to pay to opt out of a listing. And there is no excuse at all for sites like this to spring up publishing the same kind of information without people’s knowledge. With a phone book you know it’s going in there once you set up service. This site just slips under the radar publishing information they’re not necessarily authorized to share. Giving access to some information to one site isn’t necessarily a blanket authorization for anyone and everyone to publish that information in other ways. And just because things are available in feeds, it doesn’t mean you’re allowed to re-use it and monetize it.
It’s interesting how their site simply mentions that the information can be freely viewed within other sources — not that they have explicit permission or licenses to re-use said material.
On a side note they also blatantly lie on their Privacy page when they claim they don’t publish any user-generated content. They might not let people add user-generated content directly to their site, but everything they swipe from social networks is indeed “user-generated content.” Damn these things really tick me off.
Sorry for hijacking your comments, but one more thing I just tested….
They claim they don’t aggregate info for anyone under 18. That is complete and utter BS! I just looked up my youngest cousin (has a few years to go before 18) and she’s in there — address, street view, home phone number and all. How do they get around the “minor” issue? They mis-classify her as a 30-something. Starting to wonder if that’s some kind of default age guess since it’s the same they assigned to my younger brother incorrectly when they couldn’t get a correct age.
Absolutely infuriating. If you have kids, nieces, or nephews, you might want to look them up too and remove what you find.
Don’t apologize, Jenn, I appreciate the input. I have been victimized three times by identity or credit card theft so this is something I get pretty passionate about-which is why I have given this a wide distribution.
When I saw a link to my sister’s son on her profile, I almost went ballistic. And you are absolutely right about them scraping from social media profiles.
My address in California was also a rental and since it was San Diego and three blocks from the ocean, you can imagine the value they estimated. My landlord rented that property for at least the last 10-15 years.
Like I said in my post, it’s closing the barn door after the horse has escaped, but if we can make it even one iota more difficult for our personal information to be released, I am all for it.
Thank you for sharing what you found out and you are welcomed to add any other comments you want to share.