People Search Engines: They Know Your Dark Secrets … and Tell Anyone
By JR Raphael, PC World

Social search engines can turn up your Amazon Wish List, photos of your kids, where your kids go to school, your address, your business, where you went to school, your musical tastes, your medical problems, all about your breakups & divorces, your mental health status and much, much more. What else is out there that you don't want everyone to know, and what can you do to protect yourself?


I know things about my lawyer I absolutely should not know. He's 55 years old, listens to the music of the band Creed, and screams like a little girl when riding roller coasters. He also relaxes with New Age spa treatments and is thinking about getting an electronic nose-hair trimmer. And that's just the start.

Now, let me be clear: I've never spent a single moment outside the office with this guy (and for what it's worth, I'd just as soon not be privy to his personal grooming habits). I learned all of these details by tracking his social footprint across the Web -- and he probably has no idea that he has left such a vivid trail behind.

In our age of social sharing, we expect some of our thoughts to be public. But as we slowly put more and more pieces of ourselves online, specialized search engines are making it easier than ever to pull them together into a highly detailed (and potentially invasive) profile of our virtual lives (read "Online Stalking Made Easy").

I'll let you in on a little secret: The picture isn't always pretty. And even if no rap sheet turns up, do you really want the world to know that you look at bad-breath cures online or post awful "Star Trek" fan fiction?

The depths of the Deep Web
You hear a lot of terms bounced around when you talk about this growing breed of search engines. Some services like to be called "social search" utilities, while others prefer the phrase "people search." Many boast of their ability to delve through the "Deep Web" that even Google doesn't touch.

"Even though most people think the size of the Web is basically the Google crawl index, there's actually a lot of information that Google doesn't crawl," says Harrison Tang, founder and CEO of Spokeo -- which, taking a mash-up approach to its identification, describes itself as a "social people search engine" service.

People search engine Spokeo is upfront about what it thinks it can find on anyone.
Spokeo, like its competitors Pipl and CVGadget, is designed to let you dig up information on friends, foes and anyone in between. Spokeo goes a step further than many of the other services, though, by importing your entire e-mail address book.

Then, for a few bucks a month, it continually monitors your contacts and lets you know whenever anyone has done anything new, anywhere online. (The site's home page promises to help you "uncover personal photos, videos and secrets," including "juicy" and "mouth-watering news about friends and co-workers.")

Each individual bit of information may seem insignificant, but the cumulative effect of seeing it assembled in a neatly packaged portfolio is enough to give almost anyone pause.

"Aggregated identity is actually a new type of identity," Tang says, theorizing about why so many people seem to use the word "spooky" when describing his service. "A lot of people know that they have a public MySpace page, a lot of people know that they have a public Twitter album. But, when combined together, it's not one plus one equals two -- you actually create a new identity."

How Spokeo works
Spokeo's system uses your contacts' e-mail addresses to track their activity on a few dozen services, ranging from basic blogs and social networks to a slew of photo- and video-sharing sites. That means the random photos of your kids you shared on Flickr two years ago (or perhaps those less innocent images from your spring-break trip a decade earlier) will pop up right under your name, seconds after someone searches for you.
Less obvious sources such as Amazon Wish Lists, Pandora playlists and movie rating sites fill in the colorful details that you may not have realized were out there at all -- things like (in my lawyer's case) an affinity for New Age jams and nasal maintenance.

I found Mr. Attorney's age on an old MySpace profile and his roller coaster behavior on a personal YouTube video, but Pandora divulged his cravings for Creed and his suggested usages for the "Spa Radio" station he had created. As for the nose-hair trimmer, he can thank his Amazon Wish List for sending that factoid my way.

For sale: Your information
Rapleaf gathers information from the Deep Web -- often posted by you -- and sells it to marketers.

Other services access the same data and then sell the information under the banner of marketing research. One highly visible example is Rapleaf, a company that describes its services as "data and people lookup." Clients pay thousands of dollars to have detailed social profiles of individuals compiled in their own customer databases. As is the case with the data that Spokeo assembles, the information is all publicly available -- Rapleaf just brings it together. "Things that people have posted are out there for anyone to come and see," says Joel Jewitt, Rapleaf's vice president of business development. "As long as you're not going beyond that, that's within the privacy norms today."

Most of Rapleaf's clients, Jewitt says, are simply trying to understand how to use social media more effectively for marketing. An auto manufacturer, for example, might want to know which car models its customers are checking out and discussing on social Internet services. Armed with the company's list of customer e-mail addresses, Rapleaf would crawl the Web and track down the information, person by person.

"It's pretty standard Web spidering," Jewitt says. "We re-create in an automatic way what someone from the general public would be able to do if they were looking."

Electronic exposure
Whether they target businesses or individuals, the services have one thing in common: Unlike the public-record-driven search tools of the past, the new people-tracking utilities build a highly detailed dossier about you solely from information that you yourself published -- a circumstance that may give you a distinct feeling of discomfort.

"What it does is make the ubiquity of the Internet and the sheer openness of the world tangible," says Internet privacy expert Kevin B. McDonald, executive vice president of Alvaka Networks, a network management firm. "It makes the whole concept of the world sharing of information and the 'no-walls' approach that the Internet was designed for very real to people."

The reality can be chilling if the information is going to certain interested individuals: a curious client, a boss big on background checks or an obsessive ex, say. A recent study reported that half of all British Internet users surveyed admitted to having used the Internet to look up information on a former flame. The ease with which someone can arrange to monitor your every electronic move certainly adds a new dimension to the idea of fixation.

"It is a little 'stalkery,'" says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "If the information is distributed, that's actually a form of privacy. When it's gathered up in one place, it creates some new risks."

Rotenberg is no fan of companies that assemble nuggets of personal but public information to turn a profit. "The fact that someone's made something public doesn't mean that someone else can sell it," he contends. "I would say even with affirmative consent, if there's going to be a market for personal data, the user should get some percentage of whatever value the data has."

Taking control
The thing to remember, of course, is that these services aren't doing anything illegal. The information they gather is information that anyone who knew where to look -- and had the time to do it -- could find. So rather than ignoring the king-size file that may have been collected on you, McDonald suggests, you should try to use it as a tool to understand and control your online identity.

"I've come to the point where rather than be driven by the Internet, I intend to drive it to the degree that I can," he says.

"All you can do is learn to live with it," McDonald says. "That's the confines of the world that we live in."

For suggestions on concrete steps you can take to reduce your online exposure, see "People Search Engines: Slam the Door on What Info They Can Collect."

ORIGINAL

Labels: cyberharassment, cyberstalking, data mining, information, privacy, public information, social networking, websites

How 'BT Sarah' spies on your Facebook account: secret new software allows BT and other firms to trawl internet looking for disgruntled customers

(U.K.)Some of Britain’s biggest firms were last night accused of ‘spying’ on their customers after they admitted ‘listening in’ on disgruntled conversations on the internet.

The companies include BT, which uses specially developed software to scan for negative comments about it on websites including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Budget airline easyJet, mobile-phone retailer Carphone Warehouse and banks including Lloyds TSB are also monitoring social networking sites to see what is being said about them.

The firms claim there is nothing sinister about the practice, with BT insisting it is merely acting as ‘a fly on the wall’ to ‘listen and engage with our customers’.

But privacy campaigners have accused them of ‘outright spying’ while legal experts have suggested that firms making unsolicited approaches to customers could fall foul of data protection laws.

There are also fears the technique could be used to inundate customers with sales pitches and advertising, or be used by political parties.

Research published last year found that a negative review or comment by a frustrated customer on the internet can lose companies as many as 30 other customers.

A negative comment from a celebrity can be even more damaging. Earlier this year, BT was forced to act quickly after singer Lily Allen wrote on her Twitter page:

‘Anyone know who the CEO of BT is? I’d find out myself but my internet connection is so bad I can’t even Google. Such bad service, awful.'

BT is using software called Debatescape, which trawls social networking sites for keywords to identify anyone making negative comments about the company. Angry customers are then contacted by email suggesting ways BT can help to solve the problem.

The move comes as many of BT’s customers turn to the web to air their complaints because of the difficulties in getting through to its call centres.

Ironically, many of the comments on BT’s own Twitter page are written by those complaining they are not able to reach service staff.

Managers overseeing BT’s social networking operation claim ‘most of the feedback we get is positive – customers like it when we pick up on their BT-related issues without them asking directly’.

However, one disgruntled customer said he was stunned to be approached by the firm after he posted angry comments on his personal Facebook page.

The BT business customer, who has asked not be named, wrote that he thought ‘BT are just a bunch of unaccountable, business shafting, useless b*******’.

Within hours he had been contacted by someone calling themselves ‘BT Sarah’, saying: ‘I saw your post about having problems with your BT services. Is there anything I can do to help?’

The customer, who runs an online business, said: ‘I did not expect what I was saying to my friends to be seen. I have since changed my privacy settings so only my friends can access my page. What happened was quite Big Brotherish and sinister.’

It comes just two years after BT was involved in another internet privacy storm over its installation of software called Phorm, which delivers targeted advertising to internet customers. The Information Commissioner’s Office and the European Commission both voiced legal concerns about the system.

But Warren Buckley, BT’s managing director of customer services, defended the practice, saying the system has been used to help around 30,000 people.

‘The key is we are only looking at what people are talking about in public spaces,’ he said. ‘We are not picking up anything private. These are all discussions that can be seen by anyone on the web.

Listening in: Some angry BT customers, unable to get through to its call centres, are turning to the internet to post disgruntled messages

‘I would liken it to someone having a conversation in a pub – it’s just a very big pub. We can’t stop people saying negative things about us. What we can do is identify them and offer to address those concerns.

‘Many people we contact in this way are wowed by it. And for us it is another way to listen to what our customers are saying and to reach out to them.’

A spokesman for easyJet, which uses the internet for 97 per cent of its ticket sales, said using Twitter and Facebook was a natural extension of its online presence.

‘The initial reaction of some is that it is a bit like Big Brother watching them,’ he added. ‘They can be quite upset. But when they realise we are trying to help they are quite surprised and positive.’

A spokesman for Carphone Warehouse said: ‘We can often use this to turn a negative situation into a positive one. People complaining on the internet do it in an instant.

‘They are frustrated and use it to vent that anger. When we identify them we can often offer a solution. People we speak to are often blown away that Carphone Warehouse is listening and are overwhelmingly positive about it.’

There are continuing concerns over the level of protection given to people’s information on Facebook.

The firm came under fire last year after it introduced changes to its default privacy settings which allowed people’s personal details to be viewed by anyone from internet search engines like Google.

Dr Yaman Akdeniz, a legal expert and director of online privacy group Cyber-Rights, also warned that many of the firms could be breaking data protection laws.

‘Just because I am on Facebook or Twitter does not give BT or any other company the right to contact me unsolicited,’ he said. ‘These may be public conversations but firms should not be contacting users without their consent.

'People should refuse to speak to those companies and register a complaint with the Information Commissioner.'

Liberal Democrat MP Alan Reid called for an investigation.

‘This may well be within the law, but I don’t think I would be very pleased if a firm suddenly contacted me out of the blue after I said something on the internet,’ he added.’

Labels: BT, facebook, privacy, protection, spying, spyware, trawling, twitter

How 'BT Sarah' spies on your Facebook account: secret new software allows BT and other firms to trawl internet looking for disgruntled customers

(U.K.)Some of Britain’s biggest firms were last night accused of ‘spying’ on their customers after they admitted ‘listening in’ on disgruntled conversations on the internet.

The companies include BT, which uses specially developed software to scan for negative comments about it on websites including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Budget airline easyJet, mobile-phone retailer Carphone Warehouse and banks including Lloyds TSB are also monitoring social networking sites to see what is being said about them.

The firms claim there is nothing sinister about the practice, with BT insisting it is merely acting as ‘a fly on the wall’ to ‘listen and engage with our customers’.

But privacy campaigners have accused them of ‘outright spying’ while legal experts have suggested that firms making unsolicited approaches to customers could fall foul of data protection laws.

There are also fears the technique could be used to inundate customers with sales pitches and advertising, or be used by political parties.

Research published last year found that a negative review or comment by a frustrated customer on the internet can lose companies as many as 30 other customers.

A negative comment from a celebrity can be even more damaging. Earlier this year, BT was forced to act quickly after singer Lily Allen wrote on her Twitter page:

‘Anyone know who the CEO of BT is? I’d find out myself but my internet connection is so bad I can’t even Google. Such bad service, awful.'

BT is using software called Debatescape, which trawls social networking sites for keywords to identify anyone making negative comments about the company. Angry customers are then contacted by email suggesting ways BT can help to solve the problem.

The move comes as many of BT’s customers turn to the web to air their complaints because of the difficulties in getting through to its call centres.

Ironically, many of the comments on BT’s own Twitter page are written by those complaining they are not able to reach service staff.

Managers overseeing BT’s social networking operation claim ‘most of the feedback we get is positive – customers like it when we pick up on their BT-related issues without them asking directly’.

However, one disgruntled customer said he was stunned to be approached by the firm after he posted angry comments on his personal Facebook page.

The BT business customer, who has asked not be named, wrote that he thought ‘BT are just a bunch of unaccountable, business shafting, useless b*******’.

Within hours he had been contacted by someone calling themselves ‘BT Sarah’, saying: ‘I saw your post about having problems with your BT services. Is there anything I can do to help?’

The customer, who runs an online business, said: ‘I did not expect what I was saying to my friends to be seen. I have since changed my privacy settings so only my friends can access my page. What happened was quite Big Brotherish and sinister.’

It comes just two years after BT was involved in another internet privacy storm over its installation of software called Phorm, which delivers targeted advertising to internet customers. The Information Commissioner’s Office and the European Commission both voiced legal concerns about the system.

But Warren Buckley, BT’s managing director of customer services, defended the practice, saying the system has been used to help around 30,000 people.

‘The key is we are only looking at what people are talking about in public spaces,’ he said. ‘We are not picking up anything private. These are all discussions that can be seen by anyone on the web.

Listening in: Some angry BT customers, unable to get through to its call centres, are turning to the internet to post disgruntled messages

‘I would liken it to someone having a conversation in a pub – it’s just a very big pub. We can’t stop people saying negative things about us. What we can do is identify them and offer to address those concerns.

‘Many people we contact in this way are wowed by it. And for us it is another way to listen to what our customers are saying and to reach out to them.’

A spokesman for easyJet, which uses the internet for 97 per cent of its ticket sales, said using Twitter and Facebook was a natural extension of its online presence.

‘The initial reaction of some is that it is a bit like Big Brother watching them,’ he added. ‘They can be quite upset. But when they realise we are trying to help they are quite surprised and positive.’

A spokesman for Carphone Warehouse said: ‘We can often use this to turn a negative situation into a positive one. People complaining on the internet do it in an instant.

‘They are frustrated and use it to vent that anger. When we identify them we can often offer a solution. People we speak to are often blown away that Carphone Warehouse is listening and are overwhelmingly positive about it.’

There are continuing concerns over the level of protection given to people’s information on Facebook.

The firm came under fire last year after it introduced changes to its default privacy settings which allowed people’s personal details to be viewed by anyone from internet search engines like Google.

Dr Yaman Akdeniz, a legal expert and director of online privacy group Cyber-Rights, also warned that many of the firms could be breaking data protection laws.

‘Just because I am on Facebook or Twitter does not give BT or any other company the right to contact me unsolicited,’ he said. ‘These may be public conversations but firms should not be contacting users without their consent.

'People should refuse to speak to those companies and register a complaint with the Information Commissioner.'

Liberal Democrat MP Alan Reid called for an investigation.

‘This may well be within the law, but I don’t think I would be very pleased if a firm suddenly contacted me out of the blue after I said something on the internet,’ he added.’


original article here

Labels: BT, facebook, privacy, protection, spying, spyware, trawling, twitter

Cleveland County, North Carolina deputies have arrested a man for cyber-stalking a 38-year-old Kings Mountain woman.

Laurence Barnett, 40, is charged with the crime. Deputies say it appears the Marietta, Ga., man may have used information on Facebook.com to track the woman down at her church. She recognized him, saying Barnett repeatedly tried to contact her on the social networking site.

Deputies say internet users should be careful with the information they chose to make public online. On Facebook.com, a user can control their privacy settings to decide who can access their profile.

FROM THIS ARTICLE

Labels: criminal, cyberstalker, facebook, harassment, illegal, Laurence Barnett, North Carolina, online predator, privacy, stalking