I was looking through some articles online and found an interesting one that seems to fit well with the UW class, especially the topic my group is presenting on. The article found at http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20081024/tc_afp/usitinternetsearchcompany123people talks about a European website which acts as a free search engine that gathers and displays as much personal information about someone as it can. How they are able to do this is by looking through, “social network profiles, blog entries, news articles and other sources and displays links, pictures, videos, email addresses and phone numbers.” In order to obtain this information, all one needs to do is type in a person’s first and last name and then choose from a list that is presented on the website. To view or try out this new website simply go to 123people.com.
My group is leading a discussion on the dwindling protection of online privacy. However, moving with the ideas of web 2.0, we see that people are the ones that post their own personal information for others to see. This is exactly where sites like 123people and other companies find their information. Should we as users fight back against this infringement on our privacy. The truth is that we put up so much personal information on sites like Facebook and Myspace that maybe we don’t deserve this privacy if we’re not going to fight for it.
Now we have to ask ourselves whether or not this sort of site is in our best interests. This allows us to become more vulnerable to online predators like stalkers and criminals. Personally I believe that even with these sites gaining ground online, most people won’t take any sort of action until they are personally affected by an online crime. Look yourself up on this website as US citizens are now a part of this online experience. See what information about yourself you can find. You may be very surprised.
2 Comments
October 28, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Ok so i just typed in my name on the 123people.com website, and it is a little frightening how much stuff came up that was true. It compiled 20 or so links to me that are on the internet, and those links brought me to my high school website, this blog (!) and other things. This is scary how much information about me is on the internet and how I didn’t even know about it
November 2, 2008 at 6:07 pm
i typed in my name and nothing relevant came up. not even my facebook! yesssssss.
but with the layout of the site, and the amount of information it can find, it is a stalkers dream. which is not good.
there is really no need for someone to need all that information besides yourself.