"Online information brokers (also known as data brokers or data vendors) gather personal information from many sources including white pages listings (directory assistance), publicly-available sources and public records," according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse , a non-profit consumer information, privacy protection, and advocacy program. “Some information brokers also offer the ability to conduct 'social searches,' which gather information by searching public profiles on social networking sites."The PRC maintains a current list of all online information brokers on its website , but Rainey Reitman, a privacy advocate at the PRC, said the advocacy program has been receiving a growing number of complaints about a particular handful of sites: USSearch.com Zabasearch.com and Intelius.com . Reitman said Spokeo.com , though, takes the cake.“I don’t get nearly the amount of complaints for Pipl as I do for Spokeo,” Reitman said.From January to the end of March 2010, Spokeo.com’s monthly visitors climbed from approximately .7 million to 2 millon people, according to Quantcast.com , a website that measures online audience.“A lot of people are disturbed by what apparently is a wealth of information that they didn’t know is out there,” Reitman said.Harrison Tang, co-founder of Spokeo.com, said when the site was launched four years ago, the goal was to aggregate data to create a one-stop-shop for social networking. The site pulls “people-related information from phone books, social networks, marketing lists, business sites and other public sources,” according to its website.“We saw that there were a lot of platforms that allowed you to say anything,” Tang said. “There hasn’t been any tool that organizes it in a meaningful way.”But Tang said after the site launched, users began requesting increasingly more information about people instead of using it as a social network home base. This sparked Spokeo to change its format about a month and a half ago to focus more on public record searches.“Now we aggregate phone books and public records into one package,” Tang said. “The version you see today is the first attempt to aggregate all these.”

Users can search for people on Spokeo.com using four categories: Name, e-mail address, phone number or friends. I entered my personal e-mail address and received search results that included a photo of me that I posted on MySpace.com, my current city, my age, the social networking sites I use, and several IP addresses I have used to access my e-mail. I won’t lie, it was a bit jarring to see my personal information hanging out in one place.If users want to see the “full results” on a person, they can pay $2.95 per month for an annual subscription, $3.95 per month for a 6-month subscription or $4.95 per month for a 3-month subscription. Spokeo.com said the “full results” may include a person’s ethnicity, marital status, religion, non-descript street address and home or cell phone number.

And if a user wants to search by “friends,” Spokeo asks for the user’s e-mail address and e-mail password so it can scan the user’s social networks to search for his or her friends. I don't know about you, but I don't go around just handing out my private passwords to websites or companies.

Tips to keeping your personal information private:

Privacy settings: Set your privacy settings as soon as you sign up for a social network. Remember that any information you don’t protect with a security wall is fair game for public search engines.

Set your privacy settings as soon as you sign up for a social network. Remember that any information you don’t protect with a security wall is fair game for public search engines. Opt out: Visit the information broker sites listed on the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse website (www.privacyrights.org/links) and search for your information on each site. If you are uncomfortable with the results, research how to opt out of that site’s services.

Visit the information broker sites listed on the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse website (www.privacyrights.org/links) and search for your information on each site. If you are uncomfortable with the results, research how to opt out of that site’s services. Voice your concerns: Contact the information broker site’s customer service center if you have a question or concern about the site.

Contact the information broker site’s customer service center if you have a question or concern about the site. Submit a complaint: Write to the Federal Trade Commission about your privacy concerns and submit a complaint.

Claudia Farrell, a spokeswoman at the FTC, said that while the FTC agrees that social networks provide a valuable consumer service, they also raise privacy concerns.“The FTC has brought several cases against social networks that violated laws enforced by the FTC,” Farrell said. “In addition, the FTC is examining how social networks collect and share data as part of a project to develop a comprehensive framework governing privacy going forward. Our plan is to develop a framework that social networks and others will use to guide their data collection, use, and sharing practices.”Nick Newman, computer crimes specialist from the National White Collar Crime Center, said the center has received 146 complaints since March ’09 about data aggregators. He said roughly 99 percent of the complaints were from consumers who were nervous about their personal information being public and so widely available.Tang said he and the other 14 people running the site are aware of consumers’ privacy concerns.“We didn’t think we’d create such a craze and wave of attention,” Tang said. "People think that this thing is really powerful and they overhyped it. On the Internet, you have this virtual identity. So far, your virtual identity is separate from your real world identity. That’s the number one feedback: Real-world and virtual-world mix.”Tang said Spokeo does not provide people’s credit scores, bank or financial information, Social Security numbers or drivers license numbers.“That is not public information,” Tang said. “There are people talking about it. I really don’t know how they get that.”Tang attributes his site’s success to its user-friendly design.“The reason why other sites haven’t gotten this kind of attention is because they’re very hard to use,” Tang said. “So we designed an interface that even my mom and dad could use.”And he’s right. Spokeo’s design is uncluttered and easy to use. Users know exactly where to type their request and the search results are easily comprehendable.Spokeo.com and other online information brokers partner with private third-party data aggregators that search for information from various sources to display on their sites.“It’s a nice phrase to call them ‘aggregators,’” Lillie Coney, associate director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said. “What they do is collect data that might have been provided for one purpose and then they dump it into a database for money. They’re basically data brokers, selling (data) to any third party that has the cash and wants access to the information.”Coney said making personal information so easily available opens a Pandora’s box of privacy concerns.“There’s a reason why there needs to be more care,” Coney said. “I know people are clever and they work hard to come up with these applications and they don’t want to hear about the real-world consequences.”Coney also said online information brokers make it more difficult for victims of domestic violence to escape their predators. Tang said Spokeo.com does not provide street numbers in its search results, but Coney said that will not stop predators from searching for their victims.“People who are obsessed with a person will go to such great lengths to find them,” Coney said. “They have one victim, one target. If you tell them that this one person lives on that block, they will hang out on that block until they find that person.”I entered my cell phone number into Spokeo.com and received inaccurate search results. The results said the first letter to my first and last name was “J” and “R,” respectively, and it incorrectly listed my hometown. It also inaccurately listed my median salary and median home value. Which begs the question: How accurate are these sites?Newman said approximately half of the 146 complaints the National White Collar Crime Center has received pertain to the inaccuracy of search results from online information brokers.Tang said Spokeo is always looking for ways to improve its accuracy, one of which seeking more aggregation.“There’s a disclaimer at the bottom of the site that says, ‘This should only be a reference.’” Tang said. “There are ways for us to improve information inaccuracies. If you aggregate more pulled sources, you can do an algorithm to improve the inaccuracies.”Spokeo.com provides two opt-out options for people who do not want their personal information to appear in Spokeo’s search results. One option is to enter your e-mail address on Spokeo’s privacy page. Tang said Spokeo employees need your e-mail address to verify your identification and know what to remove. The second option is to mail a copy of your drivers license (with your photo and drivers license number blacked out), a printed copy of the search result you’d like removed, and a piece of paper with your contact information, such as phone number and email address to Spokeo. Both options are equally effective in removing personal information from Spokeo’s search results, Tang said.“Note that opting out of Spokeo does not remove your public information from other websites,” according to Spokeo’s opt-out directions on its privacy page.I, personally, opted out of Spokeo’s search results on May 6, 2010 by entering my personal e-mail address on its privacy page. It appears to have worked since I can no longer find my information on Spokeo.com.Reitman said the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has submitted a complaint to the FTC about information brokers, which includes a portion regarding Spokeo.com, specifically. The PRC also submitted a request to President-Elect Obama’s transition team in 2008 to research the rising privacy concerns surrounding information brokers, but the advocacy group has not heard anything since.“Designing things like this have some far-reaching consequences that the people who put this together probably never would have wanted to see happen,” Coney said. “The reality of life is very complicated.”Reitman and Coney suggest that consumers file complaints with the FTC if they are concerned about information brokers. Tang also suggested contacting Spokeo with concerns. Spokeo’s customer service staff, while small, attempts to answer and react to individuals’ questions or complaints.“The data most people are uncomfortable with are the address and the street view of the (person’s home address),” Tang said. “We’ve taken out the street view.”Newman suggested setting very strict privacy settings on social networking sites when you first sign up, which will reduce the amount of personal information you publicly share.“Otherwise, it’s like a never-ending game of Whac-a-mole,” Newman said. “You’d have to go to every single other site and tell them not to publish your information. Consumers shouldn’t be worried about Spokeo, itself; they should be worried about all public networking sites.”