As a search engine optimization specialist, I often run across
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search engines of different sorts than most people are aware of.
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This week I stumbled across a free site that is used by journalists to do background
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checks and fact checking on sources of news
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stories. I am also an advocate for personal and financial privacy
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and find privacy invasion particularly offensive, so this search
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engine offends me.<\/p>\n
The http:\/\/www.pretrieve.com\/<\/a> Free Public Record Search Engine – The results are listed as questions on the Pretrieve.com site in The arrangement of tabs with criminal info first must be done for Since I write frequently online, there are hundreds of sources of The interface of the Pretrieve.com result page also links you to The “professional” affiliations are tracked by a site called This type of error is probably common in online databases and is The Property Info tab is truly offensive as it gives you a link The multiple other options take you to financial records such as A very interesting note comes from the Pretrieve.com privacy page But doesn’t making all sources of public information easily Mike Banks Valentine © copyright March 9, 2005<\/p>\n http:\/\/PrivacyNotes.com\/privacy_blog\/<\/a><\/p>\n Mike Banks Valentine operates http:\/\/PrivacyNotes.com\/privacy_blog\/<\/a> Web Privacy Tutorial at: http:\/\/privacynotes.com\/Phone_number_privacy.html<\/a> And Performs Ethical Search Engine Optimization http:\/\/www.seoptimism.com\/SEO_Contact.htm<\/a> Press Release Optimization & Distribution Online If you’ve got news you can rank top for your search phrases<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a search engine optimization specialist, I often run across search engines of different sorts than most people are aware<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[127,260,605,623,667],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"colormag-highlighted-post":false,"colormag-featured-post-medium":false,"colormag-featured-post-small":false,"colormag-featured-image":false,"colormag-default-news":false,"colormag-featured-image-large":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/theinfosearch.com\/author\/palle\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"As a search engine optimization specialist, I often run across search engines of different sorts than most people are aware","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theinfosearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theinfosearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theinfosearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theinfosearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theinfosearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theinfosearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theinfosearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theinfosearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theinfosearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Person Search is an example of the databasification of all public
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records. It’s instructive to take a look at the results of a
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search for yourself in this free people search engine that is
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apparently used often by journalists. The linked page above
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takes you to the site home page which is a form allowing you to
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search for a person, business, address or phone number and the
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results pages can be frightening.<\/p>\n
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a row of tabs labeled “Property Info, Criminal, Court,
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Professional, Local Info, Miscellaneous” and the “Criminal” tab
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(Criminal) inserts your name or that of the person you are
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searching for in each possible source of criminal information
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under a link labeled “Registered Sex Offender Search” then a
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question with the searched name and state inserted: “Is anyone
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named (your name here) a registered sex offender in “your state
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here”? If you searched for your own name, it appears in that
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frightening position and startles you quite handily.<\/p>\n
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the dramatic effect it has on what would otherwise be a rather
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mundane search of bland information. But when I went ahead and
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pressed that frightening link, I got a gratifying “no information
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could be found” result page. Whew! Then again on the link leading
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to the “Federal Inmate Search” I got a gratifying “Sorry. No
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Inmate Named (Your name here) Race: unspecified Sex: unspecified
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found.” on the new window launched on the Federal “Bureau of
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Prisons” site search.<\/p>\n
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information on me available in one of the results tabs labled
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“professional”, I was happy to see that my occupation was
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correctly listed as “Search Engine Optimization Specialist” with
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sources coming mainly from resource boxes of my articles
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appearing across the web.<\/p>\n
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organizations that have published information about you and fills
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in the name information, going directly to a search on the name
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entered at the new site. The interface of Pretrieve.com links you
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to their sources by launching new windows at different web sites
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and prepopulating the search forms with the name and state info.<\/p>\n
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“Eliyon.com Business People Search” where links to web mentions
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are tied to the byline of my articles. Seems their forte is
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finding business mentions to connect with names. OK. But I was
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surprised to see that one company that I work with was
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incorrectly listed as being in Northern California, when they are
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in fact in Southern California. Oh, and they incorrectly named,
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but correctly linked to the web site of that company.<\/p>\n
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one of the biggest problems with this type of data aggregation.
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It is not kept current or accurate by all sources and there are
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others with the same name, etc. There is a prominent link on the
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Eliyon.com site labeled “Log in to Update your Profile” or the
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Didn’t find yourself? Add your profile!” link is ridiculous.
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Why give them info they don’t have so they give it to everyone
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else?<\/p>\n
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to the county tax assessors office record of any property owned
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by someone you’ve searched for. Plus their home address, square
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footage of their house, how much it is worth and amount of taxes
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owed on it. Oh, and phone number, street address, zip code.<\/p>\n
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bankruptcy filings, political contributions, defaulted loans and
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dozens of other possible financial records you don’t want the
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world to see. Why is this acceptable – and the bigger question –
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why is this legal?<\/p>\n
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where they make this curious statement: “It may seem contrary for
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a company dedicated to making public information more easily
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accessible to be an ardent supporter of information privacy, but
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the fact is we take information privacy rights extremely
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seriously. We believe public information should be open and made
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available to everyone as adamantly as we believe private
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information should remain private.”<\/p>\n
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available, make possible private information easily available
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along with it? Actually, this only applies to informaiton
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directly available on the pretrieve site, which is nothing other
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than your computer and connection info as they don’t require
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registration to use their service. They do place cookies on your
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hard drive so the site will not work if you turn off that option
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in your browser. The information business seems to be full of
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contradictions.<\/p>\n