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People need to be careful putting pictures on their Linked In account and on their Facebook etc accounts.

Google image search will quickly identify you on all the sites you use the same picture on.

Not exactly new: See this search on a random bystander
It used to be that tons of unreliable names and aggregate were linked to several matches for any single given person (I tried a few people I know as a test.) The unreliable data is still an issue, but the *picture* breaks our old expectations of privacy^W internet intractability. An image tells stalkers pulling up your public records on shady sites that they can confidently join / pay for the records for entry matching that face. From there, they compare to the other imperfect clones generated for that single person and notice what information consistently appears in all of them. It's a like a phonebook except you don't have the option to pay the phone company to abbreviate your name to hide in ambiguity, or make your listing private.

Still, this caused me to start abbreviating my name on public profiles almost a decade ago, and replacing my face with generic 2D logos even on private intranet wikis. I don't share much, and it's worked wonders in the long run. Not sure if that would work if you started doing it today: Even if you alter your social network profile pictures *now*, aggregation sites do NOT need to remove the evidence.

The problem here is that for the average Internet user, if you have someone's Amazon email address, you pretty much automatically have access to that person's Amazon account. Not everyone has multiple email accounts and the billing address and name can be gotten from agragators like http://www.spokeo.com./

At that point the person can gain access to the users Amazon account and simply go on a shopping spree at the users expense. Getting into an iTunes account with the same email is just a bonus.

According to this company that does "Background Checks", someone named "Anonymous Coward" lives in Redmond WA, on Microsoft Way...

http://www.spokeo.com/search?q=Anonymous+Coward&s2=t24#:3517900871

You're not the one from NY?
http://www.spokeo.com/search?q=Anonymous+Coward&s2=t24

Interesting that the one in Washington State is located in... Redmond.

Hrm, it says there are three Anonymous Cowards, one each in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

And none of those are you?
-l

Looking at the site, there is a 'remove' option in the privacy link.
http://www.spokeo.com/privacy

I wonder if it actually removes you or if they just add your ip to the list of info. i.e. "Likes using Firefox"

You're not the one from NY?
http://www.spokeo.com/search?q=Anonymous+Coward&s2=t24

Apparently, Albert Faure is female.
http://www.spokeo.com/search?q=Albert%20Faure#:964890847
Today I learned that Albert can be a female first name (on the internet).

If I was of particularly cynical mind, I would say that the banks did everything legally - albeit using a rather creative interpretation of what they could get away with - and fighting in a court of law would cost a fortune with precious little guarantee of success.

Individuals making a bit of cash on the side, OTOH, probably aren't doing everything 100% legally simply because in order to work around the system you almost invariably need an accountant who knows all the little holes in tax legislation back to front and inside out. It's not cost-effective to hire such an accountant unless you're saving tax in the tens of thousands minimum.

I reckon someone in government has looked at something like spokeo and thought to themselves "Hey... if we had a system like that where we could punch someone's name in and it'd come back telling us exactly what their house is worth, how big their mortgage is, what sort of car they drive, how much income they declared, how much they sold on ebay or gumtree or whatever - we could find every last tax dodger! Even better, if we could integrate it with the system that accepts and records people's tax return, we could churn out a report at the end of each tax year telling us exactly who to target!"

In many cases yes, they are bundled together nicely. spokeo.com is an example of a service that can do this. Sure, maybe you have no public records, but most people do.

So if anyone is interested, a friend of mine has been working on this site for some time (http://www.spokeo.com).

It appears to crawl public registries, facebook, myspace, etc to formulate an identity based on relations, former addresses, phone numbers, etc ... regardless of their email address. However, e-mail does appear to trigger the highest bang for the buck. Although I won't comment on the Pros/Cons - all those naysayers really need to do their homework first. Market Research / Online Data-Mining is clearly VERY sophisticated.

go to Spokeo and type in your name

And by searching for my name on their site, I'm sure I'm only giving them a little more information with which to ferret me out.

I poked around a little on their site. It's amazing how the terms of service state things like "this is not to be used for marketing, blah blah blah..." when marketing appears to be the only reason for such an information aggregator to exist. They CLAIM they are a social networking site, but no honest social networking site would automatically scrape info such as estimated value of the home you live in (Which I do know to be available from the records of the city I live in... so at least I know where they got that from.)

And on a related note, the company does have an opt out of sorts. I have no idea whether the company would actually honor the request that your info be blocked. Hmm... that page actually might be showing me how the company REALLY makes money... there is a link to "My Privacy Reputation Defender." Wow. that scares me a little bit more. "See how much info we can scoop up about you on the web? We can block it for a low monthly fee!" I am highly suspicious of the claim that that this Reputation Defender company can go in and remove your info from other databases like it claims.

If you want to see just how much of 'you' (and anyone else in the US) there is out there for all to see, go to Spokeo and type in your name. It got my marital status wrong and had a few gaps regarding interests. But my address was on the button and it provided the view of my house from Google StreetView. Just in case I win the lottery and someone wants to kidnap me...

To the naysayers out there, you should check out http://www.spokeo.com/ You will then know why social network aggregators will be huge in 2008. The concept is too powerful to ignore.