A few days ago, I was browsing Facebook and saw something that peaked my curiosity. I clicked on a link which he qualified with, “No one is safe… dear God…” Little did I know the shock and dismay I was about to experience regarding my personal information, in other words, way TMI (too much information) about myself.

Upon clicking the link for Spokeo.com, I was brought onto a happy-looking, social media-esque search engine which allows users to search names, e-mails, phone numbers and friends. The quote below this search engine pretty much sums up the site: “Not your grandma’s phonebook.”

Of course, being naturally curious, I searched my own name and found my address, a map of where I live, my phone number, and the option to e-mail me. This was only within the first few lines of a very long and detailed profile on yours truly.

Information on my relationship status, my credit rating, amount of income in my household, the music stations I created on Pandora, my interests and hobbies all came bouncing off the page and into my deer-in-headlights stare. While some of the information displayed was inaccurate, the option to pay a mere $2.95 a year was offered to receive my entire, unrestricted profile.

DePaul U. senior Romell Downer, 25, searched himself on the website and was equally as shocked.

“I feel like this is an invasion of privacy,” he said. “Certain things should remain private. How should you be able to search for yourself, or anybody, and be able to see what information is going to pop up? It could be anything.”

Spokeo touts itself as “a search engine specialized in organizing people-related information from phone books, social networks, marketing lists, business sites, and other public sources.” It justifies itself by explaining how all of this information is already public and they just sort it all out to serve up detailed personal information on a shiny, silver platter.

However, this public information service they provide isn’t necessarily the one-stop-shop for accuracy. “The most striking thing I saw about the site was how inaccurate the information was when I searched for people I knew,” said Robin Burke, DePaul associate professor of the College of Computing and Digital Media.

While the website has been around since 2006, Spokeo has progressed in its information-getting ventures ever since. The website can now even “automatically detect online identities associated with e-mails and URLs.”

The website does offer an option to delete your profile from its database in the privacy settings. However, this opt-out requires your valid e-mail address, which then requires you to validate the deletion through an e-mail sent to you.

Also, the website does not promise anything in terms of security as far as what hands your information may already have reached. “Please note that removing your Spokeo listing from public searches does not remove your information from the third-party data sources.”

As far as where the information is being gathered from, the possibilities are endless. A Spokeo’s blog published on April 27 stated that Facebook was removed from its list of supported networks. Facebook is out for now, but Twitter, Yelp, Last.fm, Flickr, Xanga, and MySpace are among the social networking sites which do participate and share information.

While it’s still a mystery where this specific information is coming from, another Spokeo blog posting on March 23 stated the following: “We are busy working on a new feature that would reveal where every piece of information comes from, as well as how you can take steps to remove these public information.”

The vast array of issues and problems this kind of “social networking” incites are endless. Sites such as Spokeo are ever-endangering the public by their exploitation of public information. Regardless of where else this can be found, there needs to be a limitation to the access of personal information that social media sites are deciding that they have the right to.

While there are options such as ReputationDefender that offers varied paid subscription programs for keeping your information off the Internet, the less costly option is going through and adjusting your privacy settings for every social media website you participate in.