Info 202 F12

As people become more active on social networking sites, social aggregator services which collect information become more powerful. Spread across different sites, a user can and may feel safe sharing certain parts of her life, such as a phone number, email address, or current location, but when collected into one central spot, the level of detail and amount of information available is almost frightening.

This article demonstrates how to request the removal of your personal information off of Spokeo.com, one such online "people search engine" which aggregates and organizes real life data about anybody in the United States. 

When a user requests information on a person, a large range of personal details are displayed, depending on the level of service the user is granted. Non-paying users can see basic information, such as a full name and town of a located person, while paying members are granted access to extremely detailed information, such as home address, income data, and photos. Spokeo does not store the information, but instead crawls the web when a query is submitted, gleaning data from publicly available sources, such as white page listings, public records (e.g., house sales and deeds), social networking sites, and RSS feeds, to name just a few! On their About page, they claim that this information helps their members can reconnect with old friends, learn about celebrities, and discover information about callers.

Putting aside the creepiness of these listings, Spokeo is a good example of the different resources of an organizing system. Seen from a broad perspective, Spokeo is one of many people finding resources, but as you conduct searches (for innocuous reasons, of course), each individual person can also be considered a resource. As you narrow the scope and focus on a person's profile, resources are the details such as how high their income is or how much their house is worth. Each profile is highly structured and somewhat narrative, allowing the user to form a detailed story about their search target. By doing real-time searches whenever a query is submitted, Spokeo maintains its resources by providing its users with the most up-to-date information it can find.

The potential for abuse and intrusion of privacy is high for social aggregator sites such as Spokeo, but it feels likely that they will see continued usage and lifespan.