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Are you looking to find yourself, track your social media / digital foot print, or maybe you are looking for a long lost friend you haven’t seen in years? Well I found the tool for you. Waatp offers “real time people search” service. It aggregates data from open sources such as social networks, web search engines and even some offline services.
Waatp provides access to anything that a person posts publically on the web. This may include biographies, photos, physical addresses, blog entries, news, and related web links to more information.
The information Waatp finds and shows for each person is original and non-sensitive information about individuals from public sources. All information is provided willingly by individuals, state and federal agencies, post offices, courthouses, telephone companies and other organizations. All of the information provided is easily obtained, but Waatp puts all in one place and makes it easier for you to find.
How It Works
Waatp works like any other search engine, you enter the first and last name and brings up all of the results. For this study I tried out my name. Of course my name is fairly common and the result list were huge.
NOTE: Because of privacy issues, I have censored the report and removed any personal information including phone numbers, addresses, and other data that is not important to this review.
Next filter the results by state and then city you live in. Once you narrow it down to the city, you can then click on each name and find the correct person by their street address. Once you click on of the address, a new page loads and your on the Spokeo website and you can see all of your “public non-sensitive data” on this site.
With this service, you can see their street address, email address, social profiles, hobbies, exact age, estimated income, photos, videos and more. This services is also connected to Google Maps so you can see what their house looks like.
Results
As mentioned before, I searched for my name, and came up with no results, but I did have a lot names found, so I did a search on a close friend of mine and I did come up with a profile for him. I could see a picture of his house, is address, and it showed some information about his family members that were linked to him. But for the more personal stuff, such as social media profiles, estimated wealth, and most of the features I could have looked at, I had to pay a premium for those features. So because of that, I did not go any further. So far, the basic features work and if you are trying to find someone, you can pay to get the rest of the information if you need it.
Final Thoughts
After testing several names out, several names including mine did not show up. But for the names that did show up, its impressive with the information they found. However, I do not like the fact that this service can make it easier for those looking to do harm to others. I know the information provided by this service can be found publically, but most people would not know where to start, if they wanted to find information about someone. IT would take them some time to figure out where to start and what is available to the public. At least Waatp keeps most of the useful information locked down and you have to be paying member to see more of the private public information about someone.
Before adding information to public sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites, think about what your filling out and leave information out such as your address and phone number. Let those interested in finding your contact information look in other public search areas. Don’t make it easy for them.
The good thing about Waatp and Waatp using Spokeo services, is you can remove the Spokeo listing. This removal service doesn’t remove you from all public information sites, just Spokeo. But the removal tool does work. After trying out Spokeo, I realized I had been to this site before. I originally found four of my pervious addresses and listed all my information there. Even had links to my other family members and where they lived. So at that time, I used the removal tool to remove all my listings from the site and that was sometime last fall I think. So that would be why I could not find my information.
To remove your information, fill the form out and submit it. Once you do that your information will be removed. Give it some time and then check about again. It should be gone. You can find the find the removal form here. If for some reason the link doesn’t work, go to the main page http://www.spokeo.com/ and go to the bottom of the page. In the footer section of the page, in fine print, click on the privacy link. This link will take you to the removal page.
About James
I always find it a bit disconcerting seeing data like this aggregated into a single place. It’s a reminder to only post information on the web that you are happy for everyone to see – sounds obvious but I don’t think a lot of people consider it.
Hi Paul,
I agree and that’s is why I removed my listing from the site and sites like this.
On the different social media sites that I am on, I have seen a lot people sharing things that they really shouldn’t. Such as email addresses, home addresses, and phone numbers. I don’t think they really think about they are doing when they share this info or they do not know, they can leave blank or set it to private.
I think its alright to have a public email address for social networking but keeping your personal email private is best. The rest should be removed, unless your profile is a business and you need to have your contact information public.