Something to watch out for on the privacy front...

[Werehawk]

Was reading an article on boingboing recently about Spokeo which is a search engine for people and decided to check it out for myself and the results did creep me out to a degree.
Spokeo can search for a person by name, email, phone username, and friends.
Checked my name and my siblings. I didn't show up but my siblings did. Showing addresses as well as people they are linked to, if married or not. Old addresses though not current. Including P.O. boxes. However for some of my relatives it did show current addresses.
Checked by email. It found me as well as listing some purchases or comments from amazon.com...(Which creeped me out)
Checked by username. Found me as well as some other people.
Checked phone numbers. House phone showed as unlisted but was able to find general area for it. (within 4 miles). As well as service  provider. did the same for cell phone and it was in right county but off by 10 miles.
--Werehawk--
My mom's brief take on upcoming Guatemalan Elections "In last throes of preelection activities. Much loudspeaker vote pleading."

[Bob Schroeck]

Hm. I seem to have a much smaller footprint, probably because I use http://www.spamgourmet.com/]SpamGourmet addresses for practically everything that might be public or otherwise lead to spam, and I don't use any of the free web mail services. The email check brought up a few things from my Amazon wishlist, but not much else. Name was pretty useless -- there are enough Robert Schroecks around the country -- including at least two more in my state, one with the same middle initial -- that the results are too confused for anyone but someone who already knows a lot about me. One of my usual usernames ("rms") is so common that it throws up more of a smoke cloud than anything else, "looneytoons" turns up no results, and "Looney Toons" points at 4 people across the country, none of whom are me. The phone number got the right general neighborhood, but was mispositioned so the wrong house was implied to be the location.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Proginoskes]

"rms" is more likely to return Richard M. Stallman than Robert M. Schroeck.

Apparently, either I am both low-profile and unique, or everyone with my name is similarly low-profile, since a full name search had no results. My e-mail address got my most common username (the one I use here) and some web activity, and verified its validity, but nothing to connect me to my meat-person. Phone numbers got nothing, but they only claim phone results for the continental US, and I'm in BC. Finally, there are enough Madeline L'Engle fans out there that my primary username returns all wrong results. The variant "SingularCherubim" (that being what the original Proginoskes described himself as) got a bunch of wrong results and my YouTube account.

[Bob Schroeck]

"rms" is more likely to return Richard M. Stallman than Robert M. Schroeck.

Yeah, I know. One reason I use it as much as I can, to muddy my trail.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[hmelton]

A fox news article on Spokeo

http://www.foxnews.com/sc...ity-warn-threat-privacy/

hmelton

God bless

[CattyNebulart]

Apparently I don't exist, not even as Catty Nebulart. And I know there are at least 3 Catty Nebularts out there.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[SkyeFire]

I don't turn up under my "day to day" informal name that everyone knows me by, but searching by my full formal (ie, "paperwork") name came up big and bright.  What was MOST creeptastic was that it connected my full formal name to my email address, which two items I've never connected -- the "name" attached to that email address is my informal name.  How the heck did they make that connection?   The only way I can think of is if they have access to my hosted server registration (my DNS records are under someone else's name, so a simple reverse lookup wouldn't make this connection).
I may actually have to pay their fee to get a full picture of just how badly I'm exposed.  And I thought I was leaving a small footprint!  And I've always been careful to keep my email addresses and my "resume name" separate.

[Sweno]

Well I'm not too worried. Searching for my email doesn't turn up anything. And searching for my name lists me in my college town, with the wrong age, and only the most basic demographics.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[VladimirTherin]

Benefits of being primarily a lurker:
It completely mis-identifies me as someone else entirely.

[jpub]

Benefits of having a not-totally-uncommon name, that is also shared by a celeb, and not being in the USA:

Nothing on me.