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Have you ever looked at Spokeo? If not, you might want to check it out – that is if you’re concerned about your online privacy. There’s a good chance they have a profile on you, and it may have more information than you care to have publicly accessible in any one place. And that’s just the free part, if you pay, you can get access to even more information. 

Do you approve of Spokeo hosting this information? Tell us what you think. 

Spokeo would not let us interview them, but they did tell us: 

"The driving force behind our product was to create a more efficient and user-friendly people-search engine that would allow users to locate information and keep up with their friends more easily."

"It’s important to understand, however, that offering a more efficient mechanism by which to pull together information is not the same as providing greater access to personal information."

We spoke with privacy advocate Dr. Larry Ponemon, founder of privacy research firm, The Ponemon Institute. "From a privacy perspective, it’s kind of a scary event when you, as in individual don’t have control over your personal information," he tells WebProNews. "In a nutshell, we all feel like we should somehow be involved in making that decision – whether information about us is being shared with third-parties and organizations. And Spokeo is in the business of selling information about people, as I understand it, without getting any consent or any advanced opt-in or opt-out. We are basically powerless against organizations like Spokeo."

By the way, your home address is likely included in your Spokeo profile, which is conveniently aided by Google Maps Street View, so anyone searching for you can virtually go right up to your front door. Street View itself has had plenty of privacy battles over the years on its own. Those worried about that should just love Spokeo’s integration. 

"There’s also a secondary issue, which is really equally as scary," says Ponemon. "That’s the possibility that information used and collected about you, by companies like Spokeo, is in fact inaccurate information…can you imagine information that is inaccurate, and then people making decisions about you on the basis of not the truth, but inaccurate information? And you again, as a consumer, are powerless to do anything to even change the information known to be inaccurate."

By browsing the profile created about me on the site, it is clear that there are indeed plenty of inaccuracies in the information, which really makes me wonder how many more inaccuracies are available for paying customers. 

As our own Abby Johnson mentions in the video above, the inaccuracies of Spokeo’s information likely stem from public databases that are not maintained.

"I understand the business model that Spokeo is in, and I’m sure they’re going to make a ton of money if they have the legal right to continue what they do, but from a privacy and an information and ethics perspective, this is is a big problem," says Ponemon. 

"The general issue in privacy litigation is that you have to establish harm, and the problem in many of the cases – and this is why a lot of cases get dismissed early – is because it’s hard to demonstrate harm, when in fact your information is inaccurate or it’s misused or you’re not involved in the decision for the organization to collect and use that information. It seems that the key issue is demonstrating harm," he continues. "The problem is that you can’t look at harm in a short timeline, because right now you have inaccurate information, so what’s the harm? Maybe there’s almost no harm to you. But mabye five or six or seven years from now, there will be an employment decision made based on the infromation contained today in Spokeo. Maybe you’ll be denied a job or maybe you’ll be denied a loan…"

He thinks organizations like the FTC will take a close look. 

A Spokeo spokesperson told WebProNews, "As part of our commitment to privacy, Spokeo offers an opt-out feature that is faster and easier to complete than most other people search sites. All that is required of users is an email verification process, not submitting hard copies of driver’s licenses, Social Security Numbers, or other forms of identity via fax or mail."

The opt-out process does appear to work. I went through it, and my profile disappeared. Given that Spokeo’s such a household name, this should set everyone’s mind at ease.  (sarcasm intended, in case that wasn’t obvious) 

I’ll have to remember to check back from time to time and make sure it stays gone. 

You can read Spokeo’s privacy policy here. 

By the way, Spokeo’s traffic has been skyrocketing, with over 9 million unique visitors in January, according to Compete.

Do you find Spokeo’s practices to be a violation of privacy? Share your thoughts.

WebProNews exchanged some dialogue with Jeff Tinsley, CEO of MyLife, one such site that is on the rise in terms of unique users, and not only are people using the site, but they’re paying for it. "You might think, ‘Everyone is on Facebook.  Why would I ever pay for people search?’" the company tells us. "We’re finding that consumers are willing to pay for specific content that is free from clutter – and when it comes to people search, this means a public directory that is free from unborn babies, cats and other crazy profiles that you might find on a free social network."

It is true that while Facebook is all about connecting people, its search functionality still leaves a bit to be desired. Plus there’s the fact that there is more than just Facebook when it comes to a person having an online presence. "We have more than 2x the number of people that can be found in the United States vs. Facebook and more than Twitter/LinkedIn Combined," Tinsley tells WebProNews. 

MyLife created the below infographic that shows how much U.S. data some of the big social networks like Facebook and Twitter have, and what it has in comparison:

"You might be surprised that MyLife.com is the leading people search site in the U.S., with more than 230MM records of Americans available," the company says. "When it comes to running a business, MyLife has used the subscription model to quietly built $60MM in revenue in 2010, and is poised to grow 40% in 2011." 

Another thing that seems to be luring users is a tool that lets them know when their online presence is being sought after. "More than 2.4m people are registering at MyLife every month, with many being drawn to our unique ‘Who’s Searching for You’ service that will show you who is searching for you and alert you via email when there are new searches."

"MyLife offers a highly specific people search service [and] provides members one place to find all the people that you need in your life, going well beyond friends alone," he adds. "We’re finding that mega networks like Facebook primarily focus on connecting friends and improving your social life. Our goal at MyLife is to connect people for reasons of value – be it dating, career oriented goals like job-seeking or hiring, reconnections and local services, which is launching in just a couple of months." 

Of course a lot of people are just ending up at MyLife by way of search engines. They’re searching on Google, for example, and it is a site like MyLife that ends up being the result that matches their query. "Close to 10 million people per month are visiting MyLife per month after starting their original search at Google and other search engines," Tinsley tells us. "And because we have the people that users want to find, the number is growing every month." Compete’s numbers would seem to confirm this. 

MyLife says it gets its data from public records, the web and user-contributions. The company has been the subject of some controversy in the past, but this has clearly not prevented the site from growing.

For once, the connection between a product (the people search website) and a social network actually made perfect sense to me: you can “claim” your profile in search results, then add to it or modify it.

The Wink Blog features a rundown of the key benefits of the new social network and I think they put the right one first.

• Control Over False or Defamatory Content: “Wink provides the owner of each profile complete authority to edit, correct or remove any content – photos, tags, labels, descriptions, links or feeds – in their profile. This helps them prevent false or defamatory information from persisting, and lets them present themselves as they’d like to be seen.”
• Detailed Public Search Listings: “including their biography, interests, work, school and other information. Additionally each profile can have multiple photos”
• Friend Feeds: Not just tracking your friends’ Wink profiles, but all “view a feed of their friends’ postings to any RSS-enabled site such as Twitter, Flickr, Jaiku, and Amazon Wish Lists, wherever they are across the Web.”
• Contact Me: “People can choose to have those who find them on Wink leave a message at Wink, reach them via their favorite social network, instant messenger service, Skype, email or phone.”
• Profile Claiming and Control: “People can use the industry standard MicroID to verify their ownership of webpages and public profiles found on Wink.com. Or they can associate a publicly known email address (work, school or personal) with their public search
  listing on Wink.com”

The bottom line: While none of us need another social network (do we?), the ability to have the final say in controlling your profile is always a boon for your online reputation management.

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It’s a nifty development, though not as amazing as facial recognition or anything of that nature.  Instead, Thomas Hawk, the CEO of Zooomr, wrote, “With Zooomr People Search you can now search by either email or name to find your friends on Zooomr.  This should make it much easier for you to connect to others using Zooomr.”

Hawk then concluded his Official Zooomr Blog entry by stating, “Look for more enhancements to people search in the near future on Zooomr.”  Interestingly, the entry just prior to this one was about the ability to add Zooomr thumbnails to Pownce.  And a couple weeks before that came something about Zipline, “Zooomr’s feature that allows you to follow the photos and activity of your friends and contacts on Zooomr.”

It seems like the company’s pretty busy, to say the least, and that many of its efforts are focused on social networking.  Mashable’s Kristen Nicole noted the same thing, and added a screenshot of Zooomr’s people search in action.  Some limited testing of my own seemed to establish that the thing works pretty well.

If you’re about to be displaced by the Yahoo Photos shutdown, Zooomr’s definitely worth a look.

Granted, a lot of companies say they’re leading in this or that, but Facebook has statistics to back up its claims.  For example, there are “[o]ver 500 million searches per month,” according to Aditya Agarwal, a Facebook Tech Lead, who notes, “This makes us one of the top 20 search engines on the web in terms of number of searches.”

Agarwal also mentions “[a]pproximately 1 terabyte of in-memory data” and an “[a]verage search query time of less than 100ms.”  Not bad.

He goes on to speak about personalized search, as well – this guy hits on all the hot topics.  “Facebook search results are sorted by an approximation of social graph distance,” Agarwal writes.  “People closer to you in the graph – your friends and people in your networks – are likely to be more relevant to you and thus are ranked higher. . . .  Facebook search’s key differentiator is that search results are unique to every user because they are based on a[n] individual’s place in the social graph.”

As for what we should make of all this information, it could be an indicator of a new direction for Facebook – Agarwal does mention “big plans to improve Facebook search.”

Others, such as Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, have taken the post as a “Not So Subtle For Sale Sign.”

In any case, it seems that Facebook is a more powerful entity than many of us ever guessed.

Alex Iskold, Tony Hung, and Frank Gruber made their way into Spock’s invitation-only testing, and have come back with high opinions of the search engine.  It’s “Vertical Search Done Right,” according to Iskold – check out his article for several intriguing screenshots.

But because Spock is so good, our attention is drawn to its weak spots.  (Think, if you will, of a new car – just one door ding or paint chip would kill me every time I saw it.  On a 15-year old junker, that ding would be rather less important than the missing side view mirror and mismatched hubcaps.)

“The main problem is that Spock is likely to have much more complete information about celebrities and well known people than about ordinary people,” Iskold writes.  “The reason for it is the amount of data.  More people are going to be tagging and voting on the president of the United States than on ordinary people.”

Hung echoed that statement, adding, “Sure, Spock.com could bank on the fact that social networking usage will rise to a high enough level that it self-populates its own database past the tipping point – but is that a viable strategy?”

And as for Gruber, well . . .  It’s hard to say whether it’s his fault or Spock’s, but apparently several of Gruber’s friends got Spock invites that he didn’t mean to send.  An example of great public relations work came as a result of this problem, however, when “The Spock Team” responded to Gruber’s post, gave several possible reasons for the unwanted emails, and signed off with an apology and a promise to fix the issue.

All in all, Spock’s shaping up nicely, and when it comes out of that private beta mode, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Search Engine Watch’s Eric Enge noted that search engine giant Google thinks so; it hosted a People Search SIG earlier this month.  And a factoid on the Search SIG page also supports the idea: “30% of all searches on Google or Yahoo! are for specific people or people related,” the group states.

But the spotlight turned to Wink, Spock, and ZoomInfo on the night of the session, as Michael Tanne, Jaideep Singh, and Bryan Burdick (the CEOs of those respective companies) took the stage.

Furthermore, “[Y]ou can see that many companies are doing quite well with their people search strategies,” writes Enge.  “Most people are also familiar with Classmates and its leading competitor Reunion,” he continues, and we mustn’t forget Pipl, which won a strong standing in the 2007 SEOmoz Web 2.0 Awards.

People search is growing segment of the search market; don’t expect the rate of its expansion to slow down anytime soon.