Affinitive’s Social Media Playground

Lately, my Facebook feed has been inundated with warnings about Spokeo, a people-based search engine/directory self-titled “Not your grandma’s phonebook.”  The directory sources information about an individual such as name, address with google street views, estimated income, family members, etc. from various social networks and search sites and displays it in a neatly packaged, publicly accessible profile.  Pony up a premium and supposedly Spokeo will dig a little deeper for info on the person you’re searching on.

After a few warnings from my Facebook friends I checked it out and searched my name.  What I found were two mailing addresses, an estimated income of over a million dollars, and that I was single.

My Spokeo profile is so much sexier than I am.

In truth I no longer live at either of those addresses, I do not make over a million dollars (I have no idea where they got that but I would love to know), and I’m engaged.  I didn’t pay for the premium version so who knows what dirt they have past the pay wall, but unless they’re displaying my social security number, credit card or bank info I can’t imagine there’s much there.

Spokeo isn’t the culprit, they’re merely showing the level of access anyone has to your information.  Delisting will fix the problem, but it’s not a solution.  There’s nothing stopping another 100 Spokeos from launching tomorrow, or Facebook from further convoluting or changing its privacy settings. People care about their privacy, but sometimes don’t realize how their information can be accessed.  For the most part we are complicit in the publicizing of our information online, and it’s just a matter of education to understand how to curtail the sharing of information you’d rather keep private.

Ironically enough I was just wrapping up this post when Mashable published an item on the 10 Facebook Privacy Settings Every User Needs to Know.

That’s a start.