Privacy Invasion Alert

There is a people search directory zabasearch.com that allows people (for a fee) to get a tremendous amount of information on you. I ran a search on my name and came up on their database. Urban Legends also verified that folks can indeed get your information.

Urban Legends paid for a report, and this is (partially) what they got back:

Upon submitting my payment, I was presented with a "satellite photograph" of my residence (actually an overhead view of a portion of the apartment complex where I lived several years ago) and a message telling me that I would receive a full report within one day.

The 15-page "Comprehensive Report" I was e-mailed the next day looked like it had been compiled from some publicly-available sources and some automated guesswork. It contained some valid information mixed in with a lot of bad and outdated information.

The report did correctly list my full name (no big deal, since I had to supply my name to run the report) and birthdate (month and year only). It did not include a current phone number for me, only an outdated one. Although it included my current residential address, it also listed two outdated former addresses, two private mailbox addresses, and a former work address. It didn't seem to know the difference between these various types of addresses (it considered them all to be residence addresses), nor did it know which one was current.

The report also correctly identified my ex-wife as a "possible relative" and listed her name, phone number, and several (former and current) addresses. It didn't include any of my blood relatives, however, even though my parents live just a few miles away.

I emailed zabasearch and asked them to remove me from their database. I'll see if they actually do so.

Here is the email address for them info@zabasearch.com.

Posted by rowan at May 22, 2005 8:32 PM | TrackBack | [eMail this article!] |