Ok, so I was stalking YoukaiYume's tumblr account and ended up reading a post that might be of interest to all of you American residents: finding people online. Turns out this Spokeo site contains a lot of personal information on people, including minors, living on North America. You guys might want to look yourselves/families up and remove the information from there, so read the tumblr link I first posted to find out how to do it.

Thank you for the heads up. Luckily, my old college address is on there and nothing else. EW! But my parents/ sister are listed- I have to fix that.

Thanks for the heads up, posted it on my facebook and recommend the same. Found three of mine including an address I lived at way back when I was a minor. Even has my mom's address and such up back with her maiden name, which she hasn't used in over 30 years.

Thankfully removing them was easy, but don't want to think about how many people could have gotten my number and address before I took it down...

How do you remove yourself, that is so creepy. It doesn't have my current info, but still.

Video on how to remove information:



or check out Cool Mom Tech. Like I said before, spokeo only has information of people living in North America.

Thanks for this. I was amazed at the amount of information that could be found on me and my husband. Very disturbing.

Thanks for letting us know about this. Phone number and address is one thing (you can find that in the phone book), but the information available on this site is a total invasion of privacy and outright creepy. I'll definitely pass this on to my friends and family. Plus, I'll be bookmarking this site to periodically check to make sure my information doesn't pop up on it again.

I did a search for myself and my parents and found seven listings. I'm in the process of removing them. Just to let you all know, like the video shows, you have to go through the removal process for each listing one at a time, and you will instantly be sent an email with a confirmation link to click. But if you try to remove more than 5 consecutively, you'll get an message that states,

"In order to prevent abuse, we must limit the frequency of automated privacy requests. Government officials please use your @.gov email address for priority processing."

I tried removing the last two of my listings using a different email address and then a different computer, but got the same message. I think it means that I will eventually get an email with a confirmation link, but it irritates me that they are preventing me from removing it instantly. I'll give them a day to respond.

HOW DARE THEY?!
Though some of the information is completely inaccurate or no longer applies to me, some of what little they have on me IS accurate! I don't know who this person(s) is, how they got my personal info, or why they would even bother, but I will do MURDER if I EVER find out who would dare broadcast my personal information!

It's not a person, its a data collection company. The idea is to make it easier for friends and family to find you, but they shouldn't be allowed to add you; you should have to do it yourself.

They gather your information from facebook and other sites like that. So basically anywhere you have information online, even if your profile is private, they seem to be able to gather the information about you.

What really worries me is the fact that they had an address on there I only lived in as a minor; my name should have been no where on that at all. And I have read that they have current minors listed on the site as well; that is even more dangerous as it leaves them vulnerable.

Someone runs that company and their are people working there so yes there is people at fault!

I removed my family from it, but I got to reading and it seems that since my information was on that site it is probably on others as well. They even had my 12 year old niece on there.

Maybe this will help you. I was able to remove 4 listings last night using the same email address for all four listings. I was able to remove 5 listings today using the same email address as last night without any problem. However, I did go back on the sight and redo the whole process to remove the 5 listings I removed today. Hopefully things will work the same for you.

Wow, that is unreal. I'm thankful that I'm in Canada and don't have to worry about this, but sadly I have relatives I was able to find with this and all this personal info. I'll definitely be informing them about this, thank you for telling about it!

>.> Apparently Spokeo differentiates itself by collating information about you from Public sources i.e. social media and Phonebooks and the like. Apparently it doesn't share any personal information you give the site by creating an account there, because that would be in breach of your legal rights, which would land them in a tonne of hot-water.

But if the info about you is already available in public sources i.e. the Phonebook than they're technically not in breach of your rights by collating it on their site, since the info is publically available.

That's a very grey area though.

Very grey.

~ Pyre