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Your Phone Number is Your Ticket to Online Privacy Invasion
ARTICLE SUMMARY
Privacy concerns have been raised recently by a new phone book tool
made available by the popular search engine, Google.com. While this
tool does seem quite invasive and does make it frighteningly simple
for anyone to find out where you live by plugging your phone number
into a search engine query, there are dozens more sources for personal
private information on the web. Getting out of some of those databases
is rather easy by simply submitting online requests or sending an
email to the proper contact address or privacy officer of a web
site. But other sources tell you that they draw their information
from publicly available sources and that you cannot opt-out once
they have your private and personal details in their database.
This article points out those sites that do allow opt-out and provides
information to help make that process simple. Privacy advocate,
Mike Valentine points out those websites that seem to have too much
information and warns of the inevitable convergence of all of those
online sources into a huge database rivaling that of the controversial
"Total Information Awareness" office of the Defense Advanced
Projects Research Agency.
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Welcome Aboard, You can Never Leave The Ship SS Database
by Mike Banks Valentine
There have been a flurry of posts in discussion lists and online
articles recently about a new Google feature called Google Phone
book which will now allow you to do a reverse lookup search on any
phone number. The results page displays a cute little phone icon
beside the name of the owner of any phone number you plug in to
Google's search box! The address of the owner of that phone number
is displayed beside that and there are links beside the address
which will take you to a <http://maps.yahoo.com/> Yahoo Maps
or <http://mapquest.com/> MapQuest with detailed and precisely
accurate driving directions directly to their home! The only way
to make that result more invasive would be to include any known
email addresses right beside the phone number, street address and
driving directions! Fortunately, Google has made it simple to opt-out
of this privacy nightmare.
Here is Google's description of this feature
http://www.google.com/help/features.html#wp
They make it painlessly simple to opt out of the listing and promise
removal within 48 hours:
http://www.google.com/help/pbremoval.html
and finally a snail mail address to opt out of the listing by
postal mail if you like.
Google Phone book Removal
2400 Bayshore Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
along with a warning
"Removing your phone book listing will not remove your personal
information from other pages on the web or from other reverse phone
listing lookup services, such as: Anywho.com, SwithchBoard.com,
WhitePages.com, ReversePhoneDirectory.com, PhoneNumber.com, SmartPages.com"
A popular new book for internet geeks called GOOGLE
HACKS from O'Reilly offers
tips for how to use that feature to refine your search further
if you know the state or town of the person you are searching for!
One other service provides a clear and simple opt-out from the following
link:
http://www.PhoneNumber.com/10006/remove.xhtml
SO WHAT? IT'S IN THE PHONE BOOK ANYWAY, RIGHT?
When I first discovered this feature, I spoke with a relative whose
response was basically, "So what?" All of that information
is available in your local phone book and if you don't have that,
you can call information nationwide to ask for the listing. Yes,
that should be true, but I searched an unlisted phone number of
another relative who was nothing short of horrified when they tried
the search on their own number and saw their home address, name
and phone number pop up on the Google results page. Not only did
her unlisted number show up, but so did her full name, which is
not available even to her phone provider - because she uses only
initials on her account with them. Clearly these services draw from
other available sources.
Those additional services don't make it nearly as simple to opt-out
as Google does and require jumping through multiple hoops to find
your way out of those invasive databases. WhitePages.com/
privacy policy is linked very subtly at the bottom of the page and
was difficult to see, even though I was looking for the link. That
privacy policy offers zero option to opt-out of their database or
tell you where to look for help!
They tell you that they collect reams of information about how you
use their site, what sites you visited in their network, any "voluntarily
provided information" (which is required to register at the
site) and who they share that information with, but provide no published
way to remove yourself from their database once you are listed,
no matter where they got their information.
The only hint of an opt-out option is via a simple email address,
mailto:privacy@w3data.com This email address is required by
their membership in BBBonline's
Privacy program, which is available to anyone meeting minimum
requirements of posting a privacy policy and providing an email
contact to a privacy representative. Oh, and willing to pay BBBonline
for the privilege of displaying the rather meaningless privacy lock
logo. Why meaningless? How private is a site that allows easy access
to private personal information via a site search feature and why
do they deserve trust of site visitors?
When doing a search for any number in the "white pages"
of SwithchBoard.com, it
returns a page full of banner ads, some pop-up with pre- filled
form fields with the name of the person you did a search for! This
allows you to easily search sources elsewhere for someone who has
so far been successful at staying out of the online databases! Those
paid services will pry into other public records databases to track
them down!
MORE INVASIVE PRE-POPULATED FORMS IN ADS ON SITES
Then there is the pre-populated form in an advertisement that leads
you to KnowX.com where, if the
person you seek is not listed in their publicly available free listings,
they will search public records for a fee, but only if you are a
member of KnowX.com. To become a member, you must (SURPRISE!) provide
YOUR detailed contact and credit card information, which they could
file for sale to anyone willing to pay for it. (How would you ever
know?)
Their privacy policy might better be labeled a "Lack of Privacy
Policy" when they plainly state within that policy:
"CAN I OPT OUT OF PUBLIC RECORDS DATABASES?
No. Public records, by law, must be available from the
official public records office to anyone who requests them. Accordingly,
because individuals cannot opt out of public records databases
generally, KnowX.com does not offer individuals the opportunity
to opt out of our public records databases."
Oh well, you're stuck if you are listed by KnowX.com but it's good
to know that if you are not listed in the top level of their records,
they'll give you options of looking through up to 38 other databases
for varying fees! But only if you are a member. Fortunately they
allow everyone to see their prices. They provide a very long list
of prices for each of the places they will strive to invade everyone's
privacy here:
http://www.knowx.com/statmnts.exe?form=statmnts/priceinfo.htm
Curiously, that page is only approachable from within their site
from a plainly visible "Prices" link but takes you to
a log in screen when approached by an exterior link directly. Take
a look at some of those surprising databases that they'll search
to scrape up any information they can come up with to expose your
personal and private information to the world.
(If you are a fan of pop-ups, you'll love the KnowX site. I got
nine pop-ups while researching this article at their site.)
WHERE DOES ALL THE INFORMATION COME FROM?
Where do all these sites get their information? Few seem to want
to discuss where they get it, but one (ATT owned Anywho.com)
tells you that their database is NOT populated by extracting information
from your long distance billing records.
Q: Where does AnyWho get the directory information?
A: All of the residential white pages are public information
obtained from local telephone records for published telephone
listings. Non Published directory assistance records are not provided
and are not displayed. None of the listings contained in the white
pages are obtained from AT&T billing records.
http://www.anywho.com/help/faqs_wp.html
to opt-out of their listings
http://www.anywho.com/help/privacy_list.html
ATT AnyWho Directory Service
Attention: Listing Removals
P.O. Box 944028
Maitland, FL 32794-4028
TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS IS ALREADY HERE
By far the most invasive and extreme of the information services
is InfoSpace.com,
a clear predecessor to the 'Total
Information Awareness Office' InfoSpace returns a results page
on the reverse phone lookup that not only lists the name and address
of the owner of that number, but those dreaded mapquest.com links
to driving directions to their home, the average value of a home
in their neighborhood, their email address (if InfoSpace has managed
to get your search target to give it to them), lists of names and
addresses of NEIGHBORS, web sites in their listed city or town,
and classified ads from local listings.
There are dozens more links on the page purporting to be to services
in the same town which are actually just links to advertiser sites
with ability to search for local dates from Match.com
or apartments or restaurants, etc. Fortunately, there is one more
very important link on that result page if you want to get your
own phone number and personal info removed from their database,
labeled "update/remove" beside your results that you can
click to request that they delete your information.
When you do that, they request an email address, so there is some
(unearned) trust required in order to ask for removal. This seems
reasonable enough since one could otherwise update annoys information.
But wait a minute, what's to stop someone from adding false information,
providing their own email address for verification, then answering
the email to confirm those changes?
On July First of 2003, InfoSpace announced another, even more invasive
data aggregation service called People
Profile USA that will sell complete datasets on its online database
of 200 million individual consumers and 104 million U.S. households
to anyone willing to pay for that information. They proudly proclaim
that this dataset, gathered from other public databases, will cover
complete contact and address information,
home ownership, family members, and even their hobbies! It gets
uglier by the minute in database nation.
GREAT RELATIONSHIPS ARE NOT BUILT ON PRIVACY INVASION
The result page of the reverse lookup at InfoSpace displays a small
graphic logo link for "Acxiom" in the lower left corner
of some results pages which, when clicked takes you to Acxiom.com,
whose tag line is "Great Relationships". A link on the
front page takes you to another titled "What we do" where
they proudly state,
"At Acxiom, we create and deliver customer
and information management solutions that enable many of
the largest, most respected companies in the world to build great
relationships with their customers. Acxiom achieves this by blending
data, technology and services to provide the most advanced customer
information infrastructure."
That seems like a very long-winded way to say that, they too are
data aggregators, who make a living by selling consumer information
to anyone willing to pay for it. Great Relationships? It takes three
clicks from their "Privacy" link to get to a page that
tells you that it is possible to opt-out.
Consumers may request an Opt-out Form by contacting Acxiom's Consumer
Advocate Hotline, 501-342-2722 (toll free 1-877-774-2094 option
#5 in telephone tree and be prepared to leave your information on
their recorder, no human contact here and you must trust that they
will respect your privacy and protect your information, hmmmm.)
or sending an e-mail to mailto:optout@acxiom.com
"YOU HAVE ZERO PRIVACY ANYWAY, GET OVER IT!"
In January of 1999 Sun Microsystems CEO, Scott McNealy said, "You
have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." and privacy advocates
and industry analysts were stunned and surprised by the comment.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,17538,00.html
Now reactions from the public on the phone book feature added by
Google
to it's long list of available search tools is drawing fire
and generating lots of heated discussion online. My own opinion
is that we may soon be looking back and wondering why nothing was
done to stop this continuing encroachment on our private lives by
inevitability of ever converging databases.
Oh, if only Google were the only privacy concern we had to deal
with. It is becoming more difficult by the day to stay out of databases
that may soon have more information available in one click than
anyone ever thought they needed on you. Privacy is becoming a rather
quaint notion and, inevitably, unfortunately, may soon disappear
entirely. Stalkers, identity thieves and marketers have never had
it so good when it comes to finding victims, tracking them down
and selling them things by phone at dinnertime.
One positive privacy development is the upcoming "Do
not call registry" in July. You can read more about it
here:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/donotcall/index.html
That new law puts some teeth into the fight against telemarketer
by levying fines of up to $11,000 per violation. Too bad we can't
so easily rid ourselves of the stalkers and identity thieves.
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Removal Request Links
http://www.google.com/help/pbremoval.html
http://www.phonenumber.com/10006/remove.xhtml
http://www.anywho.com/help/privacy_list.html
Email opt-out addresses
mailto:optout@acxiom.com (Acxiom.com)
mailto:privacy@w3data.com
Phone numbers
501-342-2722 (Acxiom.com)
(toll free 1-877-774-2094 choose option #5)
Postal Mail Addresses
Google Phone book Removal
2400 Bayshore Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
ATT AnyWho Directory Service
Attention: Listing Removals
P.O. Box 944028
Maitland, FL 32794-4028
Online Privacy Resources
AUTHOR BIO
Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization Specialist
and Personal Privacy Advocate http://PrivacyNotes.com/ He moderated
a Privacy Discussion List for Adventive.com for several months.
http://www.adventive.com/lists/iprivacy/summary.html He spends his
days doing search engine optimization and marketing http://SearchEngineOptimism.com
for businesses seeking visibility. Operating a small business internet
tutorial for several years helping entrepreneurs launch their early
internet presence has been a passion.
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