Spokeo, find out what YOU are doing online

As a follow up to my earlier post which asked and answer the question What is Spokeo?, I thought I would have a deeper play around with the system and try to find out what it found about myself online that perhaps I needn’t make public.

Before going into detail, I just want to qualify myself a little. I am a computing professional and have been for a number of years. As such I am always a little skeptical when it comes to using IT. I know that systems fail, they get hacked, and unscrupulous people can use systems and the information contained within them for purposes for which they were not necessarily built. For that reason, I don’t trust my private information to a site without some forethought and consideration.

Public vs Private Information

When I first started putting my information online, I always tried to ensure that private information stayed private and public information was not going to damage me in any way. As a business owner who works from home, I don’t publish a business trading address, only the registered address for the company. Likewise, I try not to publish private phone/mobile numbers unless the system in question can guarantee some safeguards to the information. If I use a number, it is usually not one that can be linked directly back to my home address, I just think that’s pertinent. One last thing, I don’t choose to publish my email address, unless it is within a “closed” system (i.e. to obtain it you have to have an account with the same provider)

In addition to the above, I don’t overtly volunteer details of my gender, religion, politics or relationship status, although you may be able to guess. Neither to my knowledge have I ever published a non doctored picture of myself. (Those people who tag me on Facebook really bug the shit out of me, but at least you can remove the tag)

Now, all that said, I am all over the place online, I Zoom Blogs at BloggingZoom (brilliant site for Bloggers who want traffic by the way), Stumble, Digg, Facebook, Myspace etc. etc. blah blah blah. This flurry of social networking started around 2 years ago, about the same time I started to embrace the crack that is blogging. What I did do, is set up my blog on this domain (stirlyn.co.uk) which I bought back in November 2003. I started signing up for accounts on many social networks using the same email address and also the same avatar/icon/profile picture as you see in the top left corner of the banner of this blog. I also decided that I was going to attempt to “brand” Stirlyn as a writer and photographer. Thus most information online from 2005 till now (and hopefully in the future) relates to these subjects in some way shape or form.

Now, because I am online under my real name as well, as a web designer, writer and a photographer, I had to make some decisions. I decided I was going to try and keep Stirlyn and my real identity separate for a while. At least until I knew what I was going to be doing career-wise. This blog and my photoblog were experiments after all, I didn’t know if I would be able to keep up with them, and didn’t know what stuff I would be writing about, so it seemed prudent to at least try to protect my offline persona (at least to the casual observer).

So there’s the rules all set, enter Spokeo and what I found.

1. Well for a start, contrary to all what’s said above, on import I find that I have my work email and personal email linked on one profile. Bang goes one rule
2. I’ve got my relationship status blaring on another publicly available profile. Bang goes another rule
3. Part of my email address is visible on yet another public profile, though thankfully this one is empty and not linked to anything else (only half a rule then)
4. OK another site, where my gender is on display
5. Got my instant messenger and email details available on another

Can you see where I am going here. I am self conscious about revealing too much personal information online, and yet I have been careless enough to volunteer that very same information online via social networking sites. Secure in the knowledge that these sites offer me the subscriber a degree of privacy, I neglected to actually check what information is actually made publicly available in line with my own rules. I used Spokeo to check my own information, perhaps it was not meant for that but I found it a very useful eye opener all the same.

Being social can be taxing sometimes

Lets say you’re a very social person who has a lot of friends on a lot of networks. How full is your maibox with notifications of their latest shenanigans? Do you log into 14 different websites to keep track of all your family in different parts of the world? Well, you may be interested in Spokeo.

What is Spokeo? I first heard about this evening when visiting a site by another blogger who I don’t think is an Arsenal Fan. Nonetheless he is a lovely person and you should visit his site. Anyway back to the subject of this post “What is Spokeo”? Have you heard of it yet? Let me shed some light on it.

Spokeo tracks friends over 30 networks

As long as your friends are using the same email address, Spokeo can track them automatically. You can see what they are doing on Flickr, Myspace, Bebo, Digg, LinkedIn and another 20 odd websites. Spokeo allows you to see all your friends content in one place. You don’t necessarily have to login to all those accounts to see new updates. You can turn off all the blasted notifications that clog up your email inbox everyday from over zealous bulletin posters.

How do I track people using Spokeo

You can begin to track people using the Spokeo interface by importing your address book. The system will then search for all the publicly available information based on those users email addresses. You can also log into your own social networking or other account and the system will retrieve your friends from there and list their updates in the Spokeo interface. It will also retrieve RSS Feeds.

What about privacy?

As I said earlier, the Spokeo system retrieves publicly available information. The information that you see in your account is nothing that you would not have seen, had you not searched for that person on the web, or logged into via the  original providers website. According to the company blog, their system encrypts your password and account information and does not store it. In essence you provide the credentials to log into say, your Myspace account, they encrypt it and use it to login and whilst the connection is open, retrieves the updates and places them in you account.

I can see the advantages but their could be potential pitfalls as well

Reading the Spokeo blog, I had to laugh a little to myself in agreement with some of their statements, meant to assure passers by that they are not up to anything sinister. This is a quote from http://blog.spokeo.com

“Please note that if you don’t want friends to find you, by definition, you don’t want to network with others, and you probably shouldn’t join any social network. If you don’t want anyone to see something, you probably shouldn’t share it to begin with. Whenever you share something, that content is no longer private.”

What they say is true, if you don’t want people to know stuff about you, then you shouldn’t publish it online. But what about the stuff that you’ve forgotten about, or may not even know about that has your name or email address attached to it? The people you are tracking don’t know you are doing it, but then again unless someone tells you they hav subscribed to your feed, you don’t really know that either.
I tested the system using an old email address of mine, importing my contacts from the address book. The usual people that I socialize with online were there, but then lo and behold was an old acquaintance but with a completely different name from the one that I knew him as. Now I know this gentleman has recently divorced, and wasn’t particularly forthcoming in all his dealings…could he be carving out another life for himself (in Brazil no less) the Canoe man springs to mind.

I’m off to test the system, and see what it finds about me. Catch up post to follow in a few days.

• Spokeo website
• Spokeo Blog

Twitter is a good source of traffic to your blog

Twitter is a brilliant source of traffic for your blog. It is a micro-blogging site where users answer the simply question “What are you doing now?” using 140 or less characters. As with most social networking communities, the way to benefit from a service like this is to interect with other Twitter users by “following” them. By following someone, you get to see their status updates on your twitter home page.

Suite of options make receiving Twits fun

Not only can you update from the web, but via text message (SMS) from your mobile phone, or from a variety of different applications built for your desktop. You can receive SMS alerts each time someone you are following writes a new twit, or receive updates in your instant messenger (IM) client. You can add your Twits to your Facebook or Myspace profile, and if you have your own blog, there are plugins that allow your blog posts and updates to appear on your Twitter timeline.

Simplicity the key to success

Signing up for an account is simple and quick. You can add your mobile and instant messenger details for notifications with a few minutes and begin to receive updates almost immediately.

Follow many to build your community

You can search for other users with similar interests to you. I have found writers and photographers recently who have very useful information on their websites through Twitter. It is also a place where late at night, you can find some hilarious updates especially if someone’s come home from a night out on the sauce. Too follow someone, you simply search for them and click on the Follow button. You can choose to get IM or SMS notifications of individual users, and can adapt your settings so that you don’t start getting SMS messages at 4am.

It’s not all about the traffic

It really isn’t. I find Twitter to be a very useful tool and have recommended it to clients of mine as a means of communicating amongst their own vertical communities or groups, especially with the SMS options enabled. You will however find that an increase in traffic to your site will result of your efforts to join the Twitter community.

follow stirlyn at http://twitter.com

BlogCatalog Bloggers for Good Fundraising Challenge

BlogCatalog the lively social networking community for bloggers has lanched a community fundraising event which aims to raise funds, via DonorsChoose.org, for public schools in the United States. DonorsChoose provides a simple way of connecting students with donors. Teachers submit ideas for projects or materials needed by the students at their school, and visitors to the site can choose the project to which they wish to donate funds. [Read more]

Work keeps me from Work

I work a 9-5 but it keeps me from what I would like to be my real work. My ‘real’ work, i.e. the 9-5, pays for my lifestyle, hobbies and of course the bills. However my real work involves everything related to the social side of life. I’m not being flippant when referring to the social side of life, I don’t only mean partying and meeting friends, but the study and research into our social life, that is all the connections we make with other people around us. [Read more]

Twitter and Google Maps Mashup

Thanks Clive for the heads up on this mashup. Check out http://twittermap.com/twittervision to see who’s Twittering where. You can check out your local vicinity or globally. See what the world is Twittering about. It’s almost like watching TV.

You can checkout David Troy (the creator) on Twitter.

Get Twittering

So today I discover what all the Twitter fuss was about and was immediately taken by the possible implementations of this clever litte site that does one thing, and does it well. I allows you to tell the world what you’re doing right now in 140 characters. [Read more]