SPOKEO or SPOOKEO?

A college student friend just told me about an experience he had using SPOKEO. He heard about this social software aggregator application in a university English class. The professor explained that employers sometimes use SPOKEO to learn more about job applicants.

Well, my friend went to the SPOKEO website and registered himself and his his email contacts. Somehow, through SPOKEO, he learned that I had recently uploaded photos to FLICKR, and that my daughter had recently uploaded photos in MySpace. He was also able to look at titles that my
daughter and one of his professors had in their amazon.com lists.

Fools rush in, right? So, I registered and found pretty much the same kinds of things. Some of them were entertaining—musical choices in Pandora--but some were … embarrassing. I’m not sure that I want to know that one of my friends has considered ordering adult diapers by mail!

The Wikipedia article on SPOKEO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spokeo) describes it as a timesaver when keeping track of what your friends are doing in an assortment
of social websites. Amazon.com isn’t listed in their list of sites, but the content is undeniably there.

So, until we know more, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU “WISH” FOR!

Last updated: February 24, 2008 - 6:49pm by ruth

Very interesting Ruth. I haven't looked into this and now I'm not sure if I'm more or less inclined to do so. I love getting updates on friends' activities on Facebook through their minifeed system - but this might be going a bit far. As Dylan points out in the following post, it's good to know what kind of information you're streaming about yourself so you can control it.

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