People Search Engines: They Know Your Dark Secrets…And Tell Anyone by JR Raphael, PC World (Mar 10)
This is a chilling article on how much the social search engines can find out about you - including Amazon wish list, music preferences, political contributions (in the US), photos of family (if you make them public) and much more.
The editor enriched the article with notes on actual discoveries of very personal information.
There is some "deep web" in this - the engines specialize in digging into the sources and some in using "linguistic analysis" to improve the results.
Spokeo goes a step further and will monitor activity of your contacts through blogs, video sharing, image sharing, playlists, wish lists, social networking services.
Engines mentioned:
+Spokeo - searches 41 social networks
+Pipl - claims use of "advanced language-analysis and ranking algorithms"
+CVGadget - kind of meta-searcher
+Also - Rapleaf, a for-fee service for gathering and consolidating information on a person - see demo of its use for contacts through SalesForce.om
Main message: "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."
Companion article: People Search Engines: Slam the Door on What Info They Can Collect, JR Raphael, PC World (Mar 10)
"Take these steps to stop the new generation social search engines from telling the world everything about you."
Posted by Gwen at March 16, 2009 11:43 AM