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

re: lack of privacy on the internet

[betonica]

Not very accurate for me. I put in my address and it had "no info found." For "neighbors" it listed only one, two houses away to the south (in the next town & also 3/4 mile away) and nothing to the north, where most of the houses are.

I note that the neighbor listed probably has street delivery of her mail, whereas the rest of us all use a post office box. We still don't have rural delivery in my town, but we pretty much like it that way - if we didn't meet up at the post office occasionally we'd never see each other.

The aerial photograph is from, I think, the late fall of 2010. It is not very high-res and is not Google's most recent image (summer of 2011).

Even the local college, which gets FedEx and UPS and other stuff delivered but has a PO Box for USPS, is listed as "no info found" despite having 50-100 employees and an average of about 300 students at any given time.

It doesn't list me at my Chicago address (2000-2005) but does list the owners who live in the same building, as well as two other names I don't know (it's a six-unit apartment building). Other places I've lived do not have my info, either, although it's been quite some time since I was at any of them. I'm pleased that I'm apparently not in their database, although they might have me somewhere I haven't ever lived.

So. Very outdated and haphazard information, apparently based on postal addresses.

I wonder if it's based on the reverse-lookup listings? I haven't checked those out in ages, but they used to be available in big books in the library - you could look up an address (or, I think, a phone number) and get the name associated with it. It's probably electronic and online, by now.