Spokeo.com says "It's not your grandma's phonebook." that's putting it mildly.
If you just have a name and city and state, you can get that person's age, address, phone number, family member's names, photos and social networks, a picture of their house and much more.
We did a search using the names of some local public figures and easily tracked them down. All of the information on Spokeo can be gathered bit by bit by going to multiple other public websites. But Spokeo puts it in one location where it is easy to find and that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
Especially bothersome -- if the picture of your house includes your cars parked in your driveway with visible license plates and all.
If you want even more information about a person, including their credit rating, hobbies and a wealth of other information you can sign up for a small fee. $2.95 a month, then Spokeo does the rest.
Spokeo.com started in 2006 as a way for friends to stay in contact with friends across a variety of social networking web sites. Imagine a Facebook news feed that includes all your friends posts on as many as 30 other sites.
So if you want your private information to stay private, the best advice is to think twice before you post any of that information on the web.