Spokeo is one of many sites now operating on the Internet that aggregate and display personal information collected from a variety of public sources (such as social networking accounts, blog posts, phone book listings, customer-submitted reviews, real estate listings, etc., as well as from databases of other information aggregators) and sell detailed reports on individuals to anyone who pays for them.
I found out about this site through a friend who posted it to her Facebook wall. It intrigued me, and I proceeded to look up just about everyone that I know well. I noticed that while most information was accurate (for instance: age and address), a lot was not (for instance: zodiac sign was off by one for just about everyone.) The "meme" on Facebook informed everyone that they could simply remove their information from the website, which seemed to satisfy most people. I couldn't help but wonder, however, how that would really solve the problem. As Snopes states:
Spokeo does have a privacy policy that allows you to request that Spokeo remove your listing from public searches, but it's important to understand that even if you block your Spokeo listing, your personal information will still be available through the underlying sources used by Spokeo. Those third-party records will still exist and will still be publicly accessible, so the same information provided by Spokeo will still be available to others.
And where exactly does Spokeo get their information? Their website states that Spokeo collects their information from "phone books, social networks, marketing lists, business sites, and other public sources," with specific mention of only whitepages.com and zillow.com. Snopes goes on to discuss their success with blocking records, and speculates on Spokeo's collection methods, by stating:
Our repeated trials with requesting the blocking of a particular record through Spokeo's privacy page have found the procedure to be highly questionable: no attempt is made to verify that the person requesting the blocking of a record is the person identified by that record, our efforts have never resulted in a successfully blocked record, and Spokeo's customer service group has not responded to any inquiries. All of this has led some to speculate that one of Spokeo's core businesses is actually the collecting of e-mail addresses.
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