Recently, I had someone I had been chatting with online share personal information about myself that was apparently easy to obtain online with a ten-second search. Creepy much?

That’s when I was introduced to websites that work as aggregators for compiling public information available to everyone online about you. This information includes anything you have made public about yourself online. Most people figure what’s the harm, but one never knows when this could be used against them. Maybe you piss someone off and they have your name. Now they can find you in ten seconds online. They know where you work, where you live, where you eat… I think you see where this is going. Maybe you don’t make people angry too often so let’s say you are looking for a job. However, your potential employer doesn’t like something you’ve made public online. Some of course would say who cares, but I say why give them that choice based on your MySpace or Facebook account?

Want to make a change? There’s a few things you need to do.

First, change the privacy settings on your online accounts to prevent the public at large from seeing your information so easily. Most of the sites that you use have these settings. A few of them are MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter, and even Google+.

After you check your settings for your online accounts, you can check the two sites that I found that show your public information. Good news if you see yourself listed there; you can have your information removed from the site. However, whatever you have made public can still be found through other searches not related to these two sites.

www.spokeo.com
www.peekyou.com

http://www.spokeo.com/blog/help/

9. How do I opt out of Spokeo/remove my listing?

Spokeo respects your privacy, and you can easily opt out of Spokeo’s public search if desired. Please note that since the information aggregated by Spokeo is publicly available, opting out of Spokeo does not remove the information from its original sources, which are hundreds of additional websites. You can remove the search results derived from performing any Name Search, Reverse Phone Search, Reverse Email Search and Username Search here.

To remove your Name/Phone/Email/UsernameListing(s):

Locate the listing to remove (for name listings, please select the state, city, then exact profile match)
Copy the URL (the URL can be found on the top of your browser and should look something like “http://www.spokeo.com/search?q=Smith%20Sample#Sample:1219812367″)
Go to www.spokeo.com/privacy
Paste the URL
Provide your email address (this acts as a verification process for the confirmation to be sent to your Inbox) and Captcha Code (Image Verification Code)
Check you Inbox for the confirmation email, and click on the link on the bottom to complete the removal process.
The directory listing will become flagged and will be removed within 1 business day.
If you are seeing any error messages, please see below for the solution to some common issues:

Incorrect URL
- Please ensure that you click on the exact profile that contains your address. Correct URLs typically end with numbers. Example: http://www.spokeo.com/search?q=Smith%20Sample#Sample:1219812367

Incorrect Captcha Text
-Type in the code provided exactly how it shows. Before you type in the code, make sure that all other fields are correct. Try using different browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.

“In order to prevent abuse, we must limit the frequency of privacy requests. Please try again later.Government officials please use your @.gov email address for priority processing.”
- Spokeo understands your privacy concerns, and provides a convenient way to remove your listings from public searches. However, this feature has been abused before, so in order to prevent spammers, bots and others from removing hundreds of listings at a time, all users are allowed to remove a limited number of listings each week per IP address. If you are seeing this error message at work, your limit may already be exceeded by other co-workers who are also trying to remove their listings. Our servers will read the requests as coming from the same IP address since multiple people are trying to remove listings from the same location. Please wait to remove your listing from your home computer, or try again the next day.

If you require further assistance removing your listing(s), please contact Customer Support.

http://www.peekyou.com/about/corporate/site/faq/

How can I delete my PeekYou Page?
If you wish that the PeekYou Page about you be removed and deleted, please fill out and submit our opt-out form. We kindly request that you specify an e-mail address containing your real name, so as to help us verify that the PeekYou Page in question is indeed about you. Opt-out requests are honored within a few business days.

All the information concerning you which was aggregated and displayed on your PeekYou Page can be found on the Public Web by anyone using Google, Bing, and other traditional search engines. Removing your PeekYou Page from our listing does not remove from the Internet at large the information it used to contain. To learn more about how information is found by our web crawlers, please visit our Privacy Pledge.

I hope this information helps as it helped me secure things about my life that I don’t think should be as easily accessible as they were.