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By Mitch Traphagen
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How much information are you willing to share with the world? Do you really want everyone to know how old you are? Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure no one discriminates on age, right? Do you want literally anyone on earth to know that you enjoy gardening and live in a middle class neighborhood and have subscribed to magazines? Do you want your neighbors, or a heartless scammer to know roughly what your house is worth?
Do you want the entire world to see your photo just by typing in your name? And, oh yeah, they’ll also get your home address and telephone number. Cool, huh? In reality, some may call it kind of scary. A web site called Spokeo makes all of that possible and more. Spokeo collects data from third party systems and aggregates it into a page all about you — for the entire world to see. It is kind of cool, in a way — but also more than a little spooky. Spooky, at least, if you’re not in the tell-all teen and 20-something crowd that has apparently lost the desire to keep thoughts and information private.
In essence, the best way to keep personal information off the web is simply to not put it on the web in the first place. Yeah, Facebook is fun but there is a reason the company is worth a bazillion dollars. All of the information you happily and willingly provide for your page is sold to advertisers. The information you freely give them is worth far more than any pittance of a subscription system they could set up. So it is free to use — but it comes with a cost.
Spokeo can grab your photos from Facebook to add a nice touch to the profile the world gets to see about you. I ran searches on friends, co-workers and even public figures and the results were surprising. In many cases, the information was completely wrong. But even in error, there is something unsettling about a website about you that you, ostensibly, had no hand in creating. The erroneous data only seems to heap injustice on the injustice of it all. If nothing else, now we all can know how celebrities feel when they see the covers of the supermarket gossip magazines.
I had two profiles on Spokeo — one for Iowa and a very old one from when I lived on a sailboat in Florida. The Iowa profile had me living in a less than average neighborhood (which is true considering pretty much every neighborhood in a small, rural town is less than average) and says that I’m not interested in politics. That one is also somewhat true, however I would have thought being a press secretary for a U.S. Congressman might have provided a little fodder in that regard. It also provided my age, address and telephone number along with links for my credit score and other financial information, offered for a fee.
According to Spokeo, there are 12 women named Julie Ball in Florida. One, of course, is Observer News reporter Julie Ball. Her profile was filled with inaccuracies but did include a picture of her smiling face along with an address and telephone number. It described her as being in her early 20s yet somehow she has managed to live in her home for 26 years. It said she has ‘some college’ when in reality she has a college degree and also described her as having children. In the real world, she is not aware of having children and that’s something she would probably remember. The profile went on to describe her home (including the estimated value) and her interests — and whether or not she is in a relationship. It also provided the names of her family members.
For some people allowing the world to know all of that and more is no big deal. But for others, probably most, the whole thing is kind of creepy. Spokeo isn’t alone — there are other sites offering much the same information but Spokeo has raised the bar for ease of use and an overall excellent presentation. There are even maps showing exactly where you live.
Again, the best way to keep your private life private is to keep it off the Internet in the first place. Barring that, however, you can remove your profile from Spokeo simply by scrolling to the bottom of the screen and clicking on the Privacy link. To remove yourself, you will have to copy and paste the URL of your profile and provide an email address. I would recommend using a gmail account or other secondary address. You will also have to wade through those always entertaining, always annoying Captcha phrases. Spokeo will send a confirmation email that you must click on and then, just like that, you will be removed — at least from the no-charge public searches. If you’ve moved around at all, you may have more than one profile listed — if so, you’ll have to go through the removal process for each listing.
The removal is instantaneous. Which is why you won’t find me or Julie Ball when you go to search www.spokeo.com. Keep in mind that you are only removing your Spokeo profile and not the data they used to create your profile.
 Web privacy is becoming a huge issue and, as it grows, it showcases less than pleasant side effects of the global game-changer that is the Internet. But, of course, there are a lot of good things about the Web, too. For instance, did you know that walking is now considered so 2009? Yep, that’s right, the happy engineers at Honda are working hard to make walking obsolete with a personal mobility device known as the U3-X.
It is a device you can carry around that looks vaguely like a giant boombox from the 80s. But simply fold out the seat pads and the footpegs and suddenly walking becomes archaic. The result is a seriously cool device — a small, single-wheeled, computer-controlled gyroscopic wonder that has the potential to give freedom of mobility to those with disabilities and even fewer opportunities for a few seconds of exercise to the lazy as now you won’t even have to use your legs to go to the kitchen for another bag of Doritos.
The bottom line? The U3-X is very cool and I would buy one in a heartbeat should they ever become available and affordable. Until then, I’ll have to get my Doritos the old-fashioned way.
Find out more at www.youtube.com by searching “Honda U3-X,” or by visiting here.
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