Privacy Online - how to? Issues Beyond Palo Alto, posted by Anonymous by choice, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Sep 13, 2007 at 2:57 am
I just typed my last name on Web Link and found a shocking amount of private information on myself and members of my family. A link on the page promising "more records" led to even more information on a site called www.ussearch.com .
Go ahead and type in your family name - find every place you've lived, your phone number, maps to where you live now, etc.
How do you get removed from such lists? I am a very private individual. I have an unlisted number. I've removed my info from Google. I use a po box for my mail. I choose not to put myself on the Internet. How do these people obtain our information? What recourse do I have?
Posted by Anonymous by choice, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Sep 13, 2007 at 8:13 am
I didn't get my name removed from Google searches, I only got it so that searches on my name and telephone didn't allow for mapping of my location. If that would be useful to you, please post again, I will try to dig up the email from which I learned how to do this.
Posted by Thanks for the alert, a resident of Los Altos Hills, on Sep 13, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Our listing included much more than the last name and initials only that are listed with our telephone number with Pacbell.
Whitepages.com FAQ gives instructions to remove information:
Click on "Listing Detail" under your name and information. Then scroll down about 2/3 to "WhitePages.com Privacy Options" and click on "Is this you? Remove your listing" The screen that comes up asks you to select a reason (incorrect information, general privacy concerns etc.) then type in a random word shown. After selecting the Remove button a screen told me the information would be removed in 3-5 business days.
Posted by jane, a resident of the College Terrace neighborhood, on Sep 13, 2007 at 4:53 pm
You can try removing your info from various sites, but it will pop up again when they buy new info, or on other sites that you didn't know about or that are new. Plus sites sell detailed info a la credit reports to anyone for cash.
I also see that to remove info from that particular site you have to send them info like your Social Security number and birth date, I think not :-) although the irritating fact is that they probably have that already.
Just to make it more thrilling, a lot of the data is bad. That site has me completely scrambled together with my ex-sister-in-law, who has the same first and last names, and who is a credit deadbeat.
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