New Web sites make it easy to spy on friends
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008
Armed with new and established Web sites, people are uncovering surprising details about colleagues, lovers and strangers that often don’t turn up in a simple Internet search. Though none of these sites can reveal anything that isn’t already available publicly, they can make it much easier to find. And most of them are free.
Some people have come across dirt on their loved ones without even looking for it. Doug Orlyk, a 42-year-old librarian in Bensenville, Ill., recently turned to ZabaSearch to find his new boyfriend’s address so that he could send him a card. Instead, he found out that the boyfriend had been lying about his age - he was 43 years old, not 35 as he had claimed to be on the dating site where Orlyk had met him. “I thought, ‘You’re a liar! You’re older than I am!’ ” Orlyk recalls. His new relationship ended soon thereafter.
Others rely on the Web to gather information on the job. Art Feagles, a technology specialist at the Cate School, a private high school in Carpinteria, Calif., runs the computer system for the alumni and development office. But his colleagues, who raise funds for the school, keep tapping him for another tech skill: researching potential donors online.
Last year, for example, Feagles wanted to learn more about a potential donor by using the person’s address. So he searched for it in Google Inc.’s Google Earth aerial-mapping program and saw that the address was for a golf-course condominium. From that, he gathered that this was probably a second home, and therefore the person must be rich - and a good prospect for a donation.
The Web sites, for their part, say they’re merely trying to provide services that people will find useful and entertaining. Ray Chen, a cofounder of Spokeo, says he and his partners “don’t want to stalk people.” Instead, he says, “we’re just trying to make something that’s fun to use.” Zaba CEO Nick Matzorkis says the dissemination of public information online is “a 21st-century reality with or without ZabaSearch.”
Larry Yu, a Google spokesman, says the use of Google Earth and Maps to glean personal information about others “is not the intent of the products.” He touts their other uses, such as helping users visualize driving directions.
Many online sleuths start by signing up for an account on social-networking sites like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace, where they can search for individuals by name. An acquaintance’s home address can be dug up using ZabaSearch or another public-records search engine; that can then be plugged into Google Maps, where the Street View feature might show an image of the address from the street, or Zillow, which can estimate the value of the home. Those trying to make a business contact might try Jigsaw, which invites users to provide phone numbers, e-mail addresses, job titles and other information from business cards they’ve collected.
The bad news, for those who find themselves targeted by snoops: There is no foolproof way to protect yourself from embarrassing personal-data leaks. But you can avoid many mishaps by going to the root of the leak - that is, by keeping individual pieces of personal data from being made public in the first place. If you don’t want others to see your Amazon wish list or the photos you’ve stored on Flickr, visit those sites’ privacy pages and adjust your settings accordingly.
Tags: aerial mapping, amazon, carpinteria, cate, cate school, cofounder, dating site, dirt, dissemination, golf course condominium, google, google earth, google inc, internet search, job, liar, lovers and strangers, mapping program, new boyfriend, pace, private high school, ray chen, target, technology specialist