When a College of Arts and Sciences freshman logged onto Spokeo.com, she never thought she would find out her mom, a married, middle-aged woman, had a MySpace account that listed her as a 27-year-old single.
“I’m just really freaked out,” the Boston University student who asked to remain anonymous said. “She probably just wanted to check on my sister, but I was still very unsettled. I’m not really sure how to handle this situation. I’m probably just going to pretend it didn’t happen.”
Many BU students said they have yet to use Spokeo, a website that lists activity on networking, blogging and photo sharing sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flikr and Xanga. On Spokeo, users can find all public networking and file-sharing accounts registered under an email address, making it easier to find all recent friends’ updates across the Internet.
“It sounds like the next step in the progression in creepy Internet stalking,” CAS freshman Patrick Manian said. “It’s a good idea, I suppose.”
Spokeo was created by Stanford University students in 2006, according to the website. The brainchild of Harrison — who had “friends on MySpace, but his more literary friends preferred Xanga, his picture-happy buddies used Flickr and his dormmates were always forwarding YouTube videos” — the site is meant to make it easier for hyperconnected people to hyperconnect.
However, some students said they are unhappy with the service because the website has made it so much easier to “stalk” someone online.
“It’s kind of unnerving,” CAS freshman Sam Cuccia said. “It’s really creepy. But it’s one of those things that you think is creepy if other people do it to you, but not when you do it to other people.”
Spokeo users can only access information that has been made public by the person who is being searched. For example, a Facebook user who has adjusted his privacy settings to block other websites from finding his profile would not be found in a Spokeo search.
Whether this makes the website acceptable to Internet users is debatable among college students, though many said if someone puts his personal information online, it’s fair game.
“If you’re going make your settings available to everyone, you should accept that people are going to go to those lengths to find out whatever they want about you,” College of Communication freshman Julian Broudy said.
“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “If you’re going to use Facebook or MySpace, you should be aware of those settings. It’s about being responsible online.”
“I think it’s a little extreme and also promotes laziness,” Broudy said. “It’s making stalking easier.”
Jenna Raheb, a CAS freshman, said she agrees.
“People put stuff on Facebook for others to see, and if they don’t want other people to see it, they wouldn’t put it up there,” she said. “I only think it could be bad if you’re putting up pictures of other people that they don’t want up there. If it’s in someone’s inbox, no one sees it, and if you don’t want a comment up, you can delete it.”
COM professor Bob Zelnick, who teaches a class on media law and ethics, said Spokeo does not seem to be a legal privacy invasion.
“I think the information is essentially public and, in most cases, has been put in motion with the consent of the party whose information can be found on the site,” he said. “I don’t regard this as a legally questionable activity.”