Spokeo is a data scraping service that scours the Internet for people’s personal information, and makes it available to anyone.
If you go to spokeo.com and search for your name, the odds are pretty good that you are going to find your address (or possibly other places you have lived), your family tree, phone numbers, as well as some of your interests. The information tends to be fairly accurate, and it is accessible by anyone.
Spokeo doesn’t seem to keep a standing database, they pull your information from the Internet live, and they do it rather quickly. I find it equal parts impressive and scary.
Removing yourself from spokeo.com
- Search spokeo.com for yourself
- When you find yourself, copy the URL of the page
- Go to spokeo.com/privacy
- Paste in the URL, fill in your email address, and type in the CAPTCHA key
- Go to your email, and click the link they sent to finish off the deed
Keep in mind, Spokeo only allows you to kill two entries per email address, so you might have to use a few email addresses if they have multiple entries for you. In my case, they listed my parents address, one of my college addresses, and my current home.
I also recommend you search for your grandparents (or other non-tech savvy folks in your life) and help them delete their entries.
Ethics
The information that Spokeo is making available is information that is already on the Internet. Their argument is that they are only making it easier to access what’s already there. On that point, I can’t really disagree.
However, I see this as one of those problems that while it can be solved, perhaps it’s best left unsolved.
This isn’t really a service for the individuals who’s information is published, it’s for other people to gather information about them. I showed Spokeo to a few friends and no one said, “Wow, I’m delighted to see that I’m listed.” The general response was more along the lines of, “Eww, that’s creepy. Delete.”
The Geek Whisperer 
I can find more information about myself just googling my name; but then we all use the internet in different ways. Just my 2 cents!
Agreed, but they are going to improve their ability to gather data over time.
wow thanks Dave
This Spokeo is really dangerous. Look at this warning I got from my email:
FastMail.FM WARNING: URL text and host don’t match, possible phishing attempt. URL disabled. Original URL=’https://geekwhisperin.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/delete-yourself-from-spokeo-com/’. Original text=’Delete Yourself From Spokeo.com’. For more information on phishing click here.
What do you think Spokeo did?
Oh man! That thing is nuts. I found myself on 3 different listings. Luckily I have more than 1 email address because they have a 2 listing per email limit. What’s up with that?
Anyway, if you’re going to manage your presence on Google, you may as well take care of this too. Thanks for the advice!
Poch – I’m not sure what game they are playing with their URL host and text. I am fairly certain that it isn’t a phishing scam. It’s a scary site, but I don’t think it’s clear-cut evil like phishing sites are.