By now you all know that courts make their records public for those over the magical age of 18. If you've ever received a speeding ticket, you're in a publicly accessible internet database with the charge plastered all over some webpage. But how much information is truly out there about you? And more importantly, how easily accessible is it? If you've ever googled your name, you've either been totally creeped out, or more likely, reassured. Google does a lot of things very well, the one thing they suck at is
people search. I can search all day on Google for Tom Webster, and I think I'm the 18th on the list. Not bad... but most everything else in the search results are not me. Granted.. those with a more common name will be harder to search out, but Google doesn't index court records, and if they do, they don't do it very well.
Pipl (pronounced "people") is more than just a public records search engine, its (as the name implies) a search engine if you're looking for one thing and one thing only:
A person.
Pipl searches not only court records, but they also search public government databases, tons of social networking websites, photo websites (such as
flickr), LexisNexis, Amazon.com public wish lists, and many other places to grab information about a particular person. Its an absolutely amazing tool if you're an employer, and a terrifying tool if you're a person who's running from what's available in the public record.
Pipl is a wonderful technical achievement for making information more easily accessable, but its also a bit unnerving. I have a
FriendFeed Profile which I laughably nickname "Stalker 2.0", but its never quite revealed this much information. Again.. the less common the search term, the better results you'll get. Try it out! I'm sure you'll be digging up terrible family secrets in no time!
3 comments:
Tom, I share your concern RE: the dangers inherant regarding access to personal information. However, it should be pointed out that protecting one's personal information is the responsibility of the individual. As you know, once its out there, you can't put the genie back in the proverbial bottle. That being said, I think that companies like Zabasearch provide a valuable service to consumers of information, the vast majority of whom are not identidy thieves. My own company, PersonRatings, must balance many of these issues as we attempt to provide a platform to rate & review every American.
This is true. And people should learn to expect that if they do anything in the public sector worth being cited over (whether that means a speeding ticket, a lawsuit, or civil dispute), it will be logged and widely available. I completely agree with your point.
If you don't want people knowing about your crimes, don't do them. I am a fairly left-winged person except when it comes to this. Now, if they're dishing out phone numbers, addresses, etc, then we've got a whole new problem. But I think that convictions (not indictments, convictions) should be public records. Just my opinion.
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