Free Republic

The Supreme Court is set to hear a clash between privacy laws that protect American consumers and the desire of online data providers to avoid potentially crippling lawsuits if they post inaccurate information on the Web. On Monday the justices will take up the case of Thomas Robins, a Virginia man who sued Spokeo, a Pasadena-based tech company that calls itself a "people search engine." Spokeo sells profiles of people drawn from data available online. When the company produced a profile of Robins, he was surprised to see himself described as married with children, in his 50s, with a graduate...

Harrison Tang cares about his privacy and takes elaborate steps to protect it. Your privacy is another matter. Tang, 27, is cofounder of a “people search” website called Spokeo, which serves up extraordinarily detailed profiles of pretty much everyone — including you — gleaned from online directories, databases and social networks. The site began as a lark in a Stanford University dorm room but really took off when the improved version was launched in March after a move to Southern California. Suddenly the number of daily searches topped 1 million. About 100,000 people signed up for full access to Spokeo's...

You may want to check out http://www.spokeo.com to see what personal information is there. Spokeo.com is a new online phone book w/personal information: everything from pics you've posted on FB or web, your approx credit score, home value, income, age, etc. You can remove yourself by first searching for yourself on their site to find the URL of your page and going... to the Privacy button on the bottom of their page to remove yourself which takes you to http://www.spokeo.com/privacy. Pass this onto those you care about.