keldwud.org

My response to the FUD about spokeo.com.

Original chain letter goes something like this:

“here’s a site called spokeo.com that’s a new online USA phone book w/personal information: everything from pics you’ve posted on FB or web, your approx credit score, home value, income, age, family member’s names. Remove yourself by searching your name, find your page, copy the URL then go to the bottom right of the p…age & click on the Privacy link to remove yourself.”

More FUD

oh hay, this one actually happens to be true :-p

http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/spokeo.asp

I always check snopes before doing what some random anonymous chain letter tells me what to do. Generally the consequences are less than desirable, thank goodness it only takes less than ten seconds to verify the authority of most, if not all, chain letters.

However, it still qualifies as FUD. I cite the following quote, taken from the snopes page linked above, as reasonable logic describing the actual severity of your information being freely available online:

“In short, removing your personal information from display by Internet aggregators isn’t a one-time deal, but rather more like a never ending game of Whack-a-Mole: You might swat down an aggregator site or two, but more of them will inevitably pop up.”

I mean, seriously, it’s not like this is the first time there’s been a plethora of public information made available on you. You’re all using facebook for chrissakes. Why the FUD now?

Just stop using your real name online, needlessly, in the first place. What are the actual chances that something bad is going to happen to you now that you’re aware that your information is public. It’s been freely available this whole time. Nothing new has developed.

For those of you not familiar with FUD:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

[update]

meh.

you shouldn’t be leaving such sensitive information laying around anyway. also, what are the *actual* statistical chances of your information being used to harm you?

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=972

5 out of 100.

That’s *if* the assailant can get enough information on you to commit identity theft. Then what happens? Identity theft is economic harm, only in rare cases does it translate to real physical harm upon the victims.

Beyond that, you all give your addresses and full names and social security numbers to any written form that asks for it, so don’t blame those who ‘invade’ our privacy.

Blame yourselves for not being aware of who you were giving your information to in the first place. None of this could have happened without, *you*, the willing participant.

Now everyone these days are all up in arms trying to foster some form of revolution against the status quo that you all created?

pshhh.

I call bollocks on all of you who fear somebody collecting all yur infoz. :-p

[/update]

Tags: chain letters, fear uncertainty and doubt, FUD, snopes, snopes.com, spokeo, spokeo.com

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 15th, 2011 at 2:28 am and is filed under Front Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.