Internet/E-commerce Archive

Stop Spokeo.com in its Tracks and Protect Your Privacy – NOW

May 5th, 2010. By AbiK

If you hadn’t been aware of a newer site in town called Spokeo.com, it’s time you gave them a visit.

As you can see from the image here, you can “Uncover personal photos, videos, and secrets…GUARANTEED”. Tantalizing and titillating, yes. Acting with a shred of integrity or a nod to Internet privacy and online protection? No.

As they say, “It’s not your grandma’s phonebook.”

No, it sure isn’t. For a mere $2.95 a month (one year subscription) you and just about the entire webosphere can access quite a bit of info about you. What types of info? Take a little look-see…

Your address

Photos of you

Your online profiles

Credit rating information

The demographics of where you live

How many people (and children) are in your household

Your zodiac sign

Your interests and hobbies

Your home’s worth

Your marital status

Your ethnicity

Your education level

And more!

Now, yes, one can argue that all of this information is generally available online in various places—some free, some not. But, Spokeo.com comes along and aggregates all that info for anyone to see and puts it in a neat little package—a package of YOU—for a mere $2.95. It reminds me of actuarial work where values are placed on a life, or a limb—and they always seem a tad bit low given what a life or limb truly represent to those who own the life or limb. I’m thinking $2.95 is a pretty low value being placed on our personal details and online privacy.

GET YOURSELF OFF SPOKEO.COM NOW.

Here’s how:

Visit www.Spokeo.com. Enter your name and location in the search box. You’ll see a bunch of info come up. Some of it will be accurate, some not.

Scroll down to the very bottom of the page…to the teeny gray-colored type at the bottom and look for the word “Privacy”. Click on it.

A pop up window will appear. This is the screen where you can remove yourself, your information, your life from Spokeo.com.

Toggle back to the original page you were on. Go to the URL bar at the top and copy that URL.

Return to the privacy page. Paste the URL you just copied into the first box where they ask for your URL.

Enter your email—you need to do this so they can bounce back an email to you to verify that you’re removing your information.

Finally, in the last box, type in the squiggly characters you see. And click “Submit”.

You’ll receive a confirmation email in your inbox. Click the link in the email to verify, and double check (search your name again on Spokeo.com) to ensure you’ve been removed.

Do it now.

Tags: Internet Privacy, Online Privacy, spokeo.com
Posted in Internet/E-commerce | 9 Comments »

Facebook Can Take Instant Personalization and You-Know-What It

April 29th, 2010. By AbiK

We’re fans of Facebook. Or should I say “friends”. We like Facebook. And yes, LawyersAndSettlements.com also has a page on Facebook. But you won’t find what your BFF’s on Facebook “like” streaming on our site.

So why aren’t we embracing this Spirograph-like “open graph” concept? Five Reasons. Read on.

Reason One: Because we know you have a brain of your own. If you are interested in a certain legal topic or issue, you’ll go to it. Without your friend’s having to share the link on FB to prompt you. And hey, if they were really such good friends, wouldn’t they have sent you the link already if they thought you’d be interested?

Reason Two: We also know that you already have Google and Twitter and a whole bunch of other options out there that can tell you what’s popular or high-ranking in search. Oh, but as Mashable’s Pete Cashmore so aptly noted in a recent post at cnn.com, perhaps FB is jonesing to become the site “best positioned to rank the Web”.

Reason Three: It’s a privacy thing. We’re all on Facebook in our personal lives as well. We like to keep it intimate. Cozy. If we’ve shared it on Facebook, we’ve shared it on Facebook. Not on cnn.com’s homepage in some baton hand-off, website to website.

Reason Four: There’s something out-of-body about seeing your high school buddy’s name flashing before your eyes on the right side bar of cnn.com. It’s like some weird Warholian 15-minutes-of-fame thing—but isn’t in reality as you’re the only viewer seeing it. And it somehow stabs at the integrity of what you’re looking at…cheapens it a bit. It’s as though rather than having CNN on a wide-screen tv behind the bar you’re at, suddenly, cnn has pulled up a bar stool next to you. A little too…chummy. (Note, of the “50,000”+ sites who’ve adopted the new FB app, apparently news stalwarts NYT and WSJ have not…)

Reason Five: We’re finding—for ourselves—that most of the “friends” whose opinions we’d actually give a rat’s -ss about have opted out of Facebook’s new attempt at web domination. The mere fact that they had to dive into the depths of the veritable snake pit that the Facebook Privacy Settings are shows the lengths they went to—a sure sign that they did not “like” sharing their “likes”. Food for thought.

By the way, if you’re thinking that “opting out” of FB’s instant personalization option is a no-brainer, guess again. Intuitive it is not. Here’s how you do it. Go to your FB profile. Click on Account in the upper right. In the drop-down, go to Privacy Settings. From there, click on Applications and Websites. From there, uncheck the “Allow” box next to where it says, “Instant Personalization Pilot Program” (which FB had so graciously checked for you to begin with). Voila!

Oh, and hey—don’t forget to “like” us on Facebook!

Tags: Facebook, Internet Privacy, Privacy
Posted in Emerging Issues, Internet/E-commerce | No Comments »

Big Brother Goes to School

February 22nd, 2010. By LucyC

As webcams become an increasingly common tool used for public safety and crime prevention, the irony appears to be that those doing the watching are the ones that need to be watched most, as a class action lawsuit filed last week so clearly illustrates. 

The federal lawsuit was filed by the parents of a fifteen-year old boy who was told by an assistant principal at the school he attends that he “was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor plaintiff’s personal laptop issued by the school district,” Courthouse news reported last week. How on earth did this assistant principal know that? And who is he to decide what is improper behavior in the youth’s home? 

What happened? The answer is pretty creepy. The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania issued laptops with webcams to 1800 high school students as part of an initiative to “enhance opportunities for ongoing collaboration, and ensure that all students have 24/7 access to school based resources and the ability to seamlessly work on projects and research at school and at home.” What’s that expression—never look a gift horse in the mouth? Read on. 

As it turns out, it wasn’t just the students that had 24/7 access to the laptops and ‘interconnectivity’. The webcams could be remotely activated by the school authorities at any time they chose, enabling them to “view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam, all without the knowledge, permission or authorization of any persons then and there using the laptop computer,” the lawsuit reportedly states. 

Wait—there’s more. “Additionally, by virtue of the fact that the webcam can be remotely activated at any time Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Online Privacy, Privacy Protection, Webcam
Posted in Emerging Issues, Internet/E-commerce | 2 Comments »

Watch what you Click: Black Friday Shopping Scam

November 24th, 2009. By AbiK

Retailers are on to me. And others of my ilk who avoid shopping malls on Black Friday like H1N1. While you used to have to drive bumper-to-bumper and play kamikaze-style musical chairs to snag a parking space—all for the reward of standing in long checkout lines and eating something “a la king” with a side of onion rings—now you can just tap your keyboard and click away (“Shipping address same as billing address?” Why, it sure is!) and still get the same deals as those loonies who actually drive to get them. Completely hassle-free! Or is it?

Unfortunately, some of the more popular sites that folks find themselves on—such as Orbitz, Priceline.com, Buy.com, 1-800 Flowers.com, Continental Airlines, Fandango, and Classmates.com—have had this little pop-up window every now and then that has you thinking you’re that lucky customer today! You (yes YOU!) can reap your reward—a coupon or that special cash-back deal—if you just click and enter your email address right there! 

And it looks so sincere—after all, it appears to be a nice little “thank you for your purchase” from the company’s website you’re on, right? Well, it’s not.

The pop-up ad is actually from a third-party—and most likely from one of 3 companies: Affinion, Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Affinia, Buy.com, Internet Shopping, Orbitz, Priceline, scam, Vertrue, Webloyalty
Posted in Emerging Issues, Internet/E-commerce | No Comments »