![]() Many of these data brokers will display a good bit of information for free, and for a one-time, monthly or annual fee will provide lots of other information, including legal and criminal records.Īnyone - including friends, enemies, prospective employers, law enforcement and lawyers investigating cases - can find a host of information about you on these Web sites, some of it accurate and some not so accurate. Some provide links to things like your social networking profiles or your Amazon wish list. On these data collection sites, anyone can type in your name, e-mail, phone number or other identifying information (sometimes even your Social Security number) and find things like your date of birth, home address, previous residences, your home's valuation, the names of your relatives, your religion, your ethnicity, hobbies, places of employment, sites where you have accounts and a host of other scary details. There are, however, companies that dredge up all sorts of information about you, under the guise of white pages or people finders or background checkers or market research services, and then make your information available online. But to a large extent, that information is anonymous and not searchable by Joe Blow, even though it might be connected over multiple affiliated sites that may know who you are. We are all becoming increasingly aware that Web sites are tracking us with cookies so that they can target advertisements at us, among other things. Privacy violation isn't just for people with public profiles on social sites or the fillers-out of a gazillion online sweepstakes and surveys. In fact, even if you're some rare creature who has never even perused the Web (and if so, we're confused about how you're reading this article), there's likely still far more information about you online than you would have believed possible, and even the most alarmingly personal details can be had for free or for a price. But how about acquaintances or even non-governmental strangers on the Web? If you've been using the Internet for any length of time, there's probably lots of information floating around out there about you, from your and your friends' social networking accounts, messages boards, blogs and other sites you've registered for and then forgotten. Current events may have you worrying about the NSA spying on you.
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