Buzz Out Loud Lounge: Major privacy violation site - Spock.com
Major privacy violation site - Spock.com
by guy_dudeman - 6/13/08 11:29 AMHave any of you seen Spock.com???
I think that this website is a major violation of privacy. Their entire model is scanning the web and mining data on people, then mirroring it on their site!!
They have my old Myspace and Facebook information EVEN THOUGH I DELETED THOSE ACCOUNTS MONTHS AGO!!!
I've contacted them and haven't gotten a reply yet. I've also gone through their FAQ and there's no real easy way to get it off of their site.
Just wondering what everyone else thinks of this.
hmmm
by guy_dudeman - 6/13/08 12:18 PM In reply to: Major privacy violation site - Spock.com by guy_dudemanJust got a reply, apparently the only way to get your info off their site is to sign up for their service and "claim" your listing, then try to delete it somehow from within the system.
In my humble opinion, [This is bad]
Well...
by rosscbrown - 6/15/08 8:27 PM In reply to: Major privacy violation site - Spock.com by guy_dudemanWhile I understand that you are upset and unhappy that this company as managed to collect this information, you must understand that this is the way of the Internet.
When posting anything online I think it is important to remember that you essentially lose the ability to control that given the nature of the internet and its reliance on duplicating and caching information.
Sadly I’m not sure what the policy of MySpace and Facebook etc is with regards to their pages being crawled. Ideally the sites should offer the end user the ability to block external indexing of their user information. The only way that I see this as being a ‘major privacy’ violation’ is that if the company in question was ignoring The Robots Exclusion Protocol (whereby user-agents are listed and excluded from indexing pages) and indexing your profile pages.
In short, if you don’t want people to find things out, don’t put it online!
Out of interest, what do you think about companies indexing blog posts in order to discover more about their brands and better target their companies and product development?
NB: I currently finance a similar (but not public) research project at work.
You're right
by guy_dudeman - 6/15/08 9:31 PM In reply to: Well... by rosscbrownI guess you're right, but I just think there's something morally wrong with taking other peoples' information, copying it to your site, displaying it without their permission, then making it exceedingly hard for the person whose information it is to remove that information from your site.
Since I had deleted my personal information from Myspace and Facebook, the last thing I expected was for someone to have harvested it and to be trying to make a profit off of it. I also didn't expect it to be so hard to get my information OFF of their site. I didn't give THEM permission to display it, I gave Myspace and Facebook temporary permission! Then I took it away!
I equate it to letting your kid use your car, then deciding (for whatever reason) not to let him use it anymore, so you take it away.
Little did you know that when you lent it to him, he was letting his friend use it in his taxi business.
However, his friend didn't know that you took the car away, so he continues to use it as a taxi, without your permission!
Then, when you try to get my car back, he gives a tremendous chase, and finally, after a sixteen-state pursuit, you get it back in your possession. With no help from the police! 
Also, to answer your question, I don't think there's very much wrong with companies harvesting information from blogs about their products. It's just like scanning magazines or any other medium.
But there's a line you cross where it becomes wrong, such as using the blog posts in your ads without the blogger's permission, or displaying those blog posts on your company's website without the permission of the blogger. That's where I think people overstep the bounds of common-courtesy.
Message from Spock
by SpockTeam2008 - 6/16/08 2:46 PM In reply to: You're right by guy_dudemanHi,
As a Spock employee I figured I'd chime in to help explain some of your comments and questions.
1) It's important to think of Spock as a search engine rather than a social network such as Myspace or Facebook (in your case you may have created a Spock search result after signing up for one of our Facebook aps). The goal of Spock is to create a great people search where people can easily find and search other people. With that said, while your Spock search result may have included links to your old Myspace and Facebook accounts, those links would no longer be valid.
2) Because we aren't able to index as often as we'd like, we've given people the ability to claim their search result to remove irrelevant information and add other relevant information, thereby effectively enabling people to "take the car back".
If you have any other questions regarding Spock please feel free to e-mail us at info@corp.spock.com and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.
My problems with Spock are twofold:
by guy_dudeman - 6/16/08 3:08 PM In reply to: Message from Spock by SpockTeam2008My problems with Spock are twofold:
1. You're using a beloved Star Trek character's name in vain
2. It's opt-out rather than opt-in. How would you like it if I came over to your house and started putting up signs saying "SPOCKTEAM2008 LIVES HERE!!" without your permission? And then, when you told me to take the signs down, I told you that you had to do it yourself through some convoluted process?
Also, I'm not a noob when it comes to the web, and if I couldn't figure out how to get the listing removed without having to email you, then the process doesn't work.
By the way, my listing still comes up on the search results page, with a lot of information gleaned from my deleted myspace account.
But when you click on my name for the expanded listing, (also the place where I could "claim" my listing and somehow delete it), the expanded listing page does not come up and instead you get an error saying "no person was found matching XXX"
This just doesn't work!
Understandable
by SpockTeam2008 - 6/16/08 4:17 PM In reply to: My problems with Spock are twofold: by guy_dudemanHi,
I first have to preface my response with the fact that as a Spock employee my opinions are of course biased.
1) In case you were curious SPOCK stands for Single Point of Contact and Knowledge.
2) We'd be a far less useful website if we we were strictly an Opt-In service. Again Spock works similar to Google and Yahoo in that we index publicly available information. Whether or not you intended people to know that The Notebook is your favorite movie, or that you are really into competitive gardening is really up to the person writing the information to be aware that other people might see it. I think it's also important for people to be aware of where they are on Web by looking for themselves every once in a while.
3) While we're working on changing the UI design of the site, to claim your search result you have to click the "Claim" button found on the top right corner of the result.
-Since it appears that you are having difficulty with deleting your result please feel free to e-mail me (patrick@corp.spock.com) so that I can look into the matter
Agreed
by guy_dudeman - 6/16/08 4:56 PM In reply to: Understandable by SpockTeam2008I agree with your statement, "I think it's also important for people to be aware of where they are on Web by looking for themselves every once in a while."
Exactly! That's actually how I found spock and found out what you guys were doing!
If Spock were an Opt-In service, it would be extremely useful and I MIGHT consider using it as a launching pad for all my online presences. However, since it's not, and since you decided to gather my information on your own without my permission, that made me angry and to feel violated.
And I'm not the only one to have this problem, apparently. Check out all these responses at the GetSatisfaction site you guys have set up for feedback:
http://getsatisfaction.com/spock
With titles such as:
- How the !@#$ do I get off of your god awful website?
- Get my private info off your site NOW!
- No longer have a Friendster account but I'm still on your site!
- How do I delete my account and remove my search result?
- Unable to remove Live Search results
- I hate data harvesting, and I refuse to use your service.
- I don't know how you got informations from facebook but my name and pictures are for facebook use only, I don't want them to be seen by everybody on the web, it's private. Please remove me from spoke as soon as possible. Thank you.
- Use of images without approval or acknowlegement
I think you guys have a MAJOR problem and that problem is that your service is Opt-Out, not Opt-In.
Legal action?
by bmn_1213 - 1/19/09 2:49 AM In reply to: Agreed by guy_dudemanIs there any way to take legal action to spock.com for privacy violation? Specially if their publishing contents that has been deleted from social networking sites? Any suggestions on how to proceed in this matter?
| Forum legend: | |
 |
Locked thread |
 |
Moderator |
 |
CNET staff |
 |
Samsung staff |
 |
Norton Authorized Support team |
 |
AVG staff |
 |
Windows Outreach team |
 |
Dell staff |
 |
Intel staff |
