lack of privacy on the internet

[firecat]

Two people came to my door yesterday and asked for me by my (legal) name. They claimed to be from the company that I buy landline phone service from (AT&T) and were trying to upsell me on some more services and generally fishing for information. I told them I was happy with the services I have.

I wondered if it was a scam, but I thought "they have my name, and I don't think my full name is publicly associated with my address and phone number."

I told the OH about it and he pointed me here:

http://neighbors.whitepages.com/

I entered an address in my neighborhood. It had full names and telephone numbers associated with every house on my block.

So I take note that anyone can look up my address and associate it with my legal name. Supposedly you can remove your info from this particular site, but it would probably just pop up somewhere else.

Comments

[megwrites]

Holy crap! That site is seriously scary and not entirely accurate. For one, it thinks that my parents still live at my old place in Queens, and it has my stepmom's maiden and married name. But it doesn't have me at ANY of my current residences.

My name is not on any of the addresses I've put in that I've lived at in the last ten years, but it still lists me as living in the house I grew up in a LOOOONG time ago. This tells me that they're mining data from not so legitimate places because the only things that would've had me listed as living there would have been things like school registration, medical records, and any mail I got sent while living there which mostly consisted of birthday cards and stuff.

I am now seriously pissed off at this. This is like a stalker's damn dream come true.