Info@wiperts.com
Websites publish your personal info to anyone who searches your name
There are a entire sets of websites whose entire existence is to post private information about people so they can sell it. The get this data from many sources. Mostly they purchase it from data brokers, who purchase it from companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Instagram, even your supermarket or pharmacy. Since these companies want to spend as little money as possible, they generally only purchase the “hot” items like your full name, home address and cell phone number. After they have that data, it’s cheaper for them to pay people to troll the internet and social media sites to gather even more data on you. In some cases the information is public record. For instance, if you had parking violations or other court recorded issues, like tickets or anything else, they can get this information publicly. If you went to a certain school or college, this information is also usually publicly available. Other data can be trolled from your own posts, comments, and blogs. Once they have a fair amount of data the store it in a database. When someone searches your name, their website comes up, and tells the searcher that they have data on you. The person only has to click on your name to see openly available info. To gain access to more information about you, they pay a fee that varies from $4 all the way up to a $100 or more dollars, depending on the depth of information the person is looking for and how much data the company actually has on file. Once the fee is paid, which is a subscription, usually unbeknownst to them, they are then given access to whatever data the company has gathered and trolled online.
This could leave you vulnerable to stalkers, predators and others who have no business prying into your personal life and data. Companies who want to hire you will let you know they are doing a background check and generally only look for past employers, criminal records and any other information that might indicate a problem for the company later on. As long as there’s nothing glaring and you didn’t lie about your history, these generally turn up no surprises. However, some of these data sites can be totally inaccurate, or even false. The fact that anyone who’s snooping around in your private data, is itself highly unethical, not to mention creepy, but in the data eating world we live in, some people just can’t get enough third party information about others. If you prefer people ask you about private information by getting to know you, then you should have this data removed as soon as possible. You can do this yourself, or you can find a company to do it for you. Either way, it is worth taking care of if you value your privacy.
If you have questions about personal data removal, talk to the team at Wiperts.
