You might be amazed what snoopers can find about you on the Web
Some people have come across dirt on their loved ones without even looking for it. Doug Orlyk, a 42 year old librarian in Bensenville, Ill., recently turned to ZabaSearch to find his new boyfriend’s address so that he could send him a card. Instead, he found out that the boyfriend had been lying about his age he was 43 years old, not 35 as he had claimed to be on the dating site where Orlyk had met him. «I thought, ‘You’re a liar! pandora essence You’re older than I am!,'» Orlyk said. His new relationship ended soon thereafter.Many online sleuths start by signing up for an account on social networking sites like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace, where they can search for individuals by name. (News Corp. is the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.) An acquaintance’s home address can be dug up using ZabaSearch or another public records search engine; that can then be plugged into Google Maps, where the Street View feature might show an image of the address from the street, or Zillow, which can estimate the value of the home. Those trying to make a business contact might try Jigsaw, which invites users to provide phone numbers, e mail addresses, job titles and other information from business cards they’ve collected.The bad news, for those who find themselves targeted by snoops. There is no foolproof way to protect yourself from embarrassing personal data leaks. But you can avoid many mishaps by going to the root of the leak that is, by keeping individual pieces of personal data from being made public in the first place. If you don’t want people to find your address online, for example, don’t list it in local phone books, which often provide data to online address search services. If you don’t want others to see your Amazon wish list or the photos you’ve stored on Flickr, visit those sites’ privacy pages and adjust your settings accordingly.