You Cannot Hide From Public Record Search Engines

As a search engine optimization specialist, I often run across search engines of different sorts than most people are aware of. This week I stumbled across a free site that is used by journal- ists to do background checks and fact checking on sources of news stories. I am also an advocate for personal and financial privacy and find privacy invasion particularly offensive, so this search engine offends me.

The Pretrieve.com - Free Public Record Search Engine - Person Search is an example of the databasification of all public records. It's instructive to take a look at the results of a search for yourself in this free people search engine that is apparently used often by journalists. The linked page above takes you to the site home page which is a form allowing you to search for a person, business, address or phone number and the results pages can be frightening.

The results are listed as questions on the Pretrieve.com site in a row of tabs labeled "Property Info, Criminal, Court, Professional, Local Info, Miscellaneous" and the "Criminal" tab (Criminal) inserts your name or that of the person you are searching for in each possible source of criminal information under a link labeled "Registered Sex Offender Search" then a question with the searched name and state inserted: "Is anyone named (your name here) a registered sex offender in "your state here"? If you searched for your own name, it appears in that frightening position and startles you quite handily.

The arrangement of tabs with criminal info first must be done for the dramatic effect it has on what would otherwise be a rather mundane search of bland information. But when I went ahead and pressed that frightening link, I got a gratifying "no information could be found" result page. Whew! Then again on the link leading to the "Federal Inmate Search" I got a gratifying "Sorry. No Inmate Named (Your name here) Race: unspecified Sex: unspecified found." on the new window launched on the Federal "Bureau of Prisons" site search.

Since I write frequently online, there are hundreds of sources of information on me available in one of the results tabs labled "professional", I was happy to see that my occupation was correctly listed as "Search Engine Optimization Specialist" with sources coming mainly from resource boxes of my articles appearing across the web.

The interface of the Pretrieve.com result page also links you to organizations that have published information about you and fills in the name information, going directly to a search on the name entered at the new site. The interface of Pretrieve.com links you to their sources by launching new windows at different web sites and prepopulating the search forms with the name and state info.

The "professional" affiliations are tracked by a site called "Eliyon.com Business People Search" where links to web mentions are tied to the byline of my articles. Seems their forte is finding business mentions to connect with names. OK. But I was surprised to see that one company that I work with was incorrectly listed as being in Northern California, when they are in fact in Southern California. Oh, and they incorrectly named, but correctly linked to the web site of that company.

This type of error is probably common in online databases and is one of the biggest problems with this type of data aggregation. It is not kept current or accurate by all sources and there are others with the same name, etc. There is a prominent link on the Eliyon.com site labeled "Log in to Update your Profile" or the Didn't find yourself? Add your profile!" link is ridiculous. Why give them info they don't have so they give it to everyone else?

The Property Info tab is truly offensive as it gives you a link to the county tax assessors office record of any property owned by someone you've searched for. Plus their home address, square footage of their house, how much it is worth and amount of taxes owed on it. Oh, and phone number, street address, zip code.

pretrieve The multiple other options take you to financial records such as bankruptcy filings, political contributions, defaulted loans and dozens of other possible financial records you don't want the world to see. Why is this acceptable - and the bigger question - why is this legal?

A very interesting note comes from the Pretrieve.com privacy page where they make this curious statement: "It may seem contrary for a company dedicated to making public information more easily accessible to be an ardent supporter of information privacy, but the fact is we take information privacy rights extremely seriously. We believe public information should be open and made available to everyone as adamantly as we believe private information should remain private."

But doesn't making all sources of public information easily available, make possible private information easily available along with it? Actually, this only applies to informaiton directly available on the pretrieve site, which is nothing other than your computer and connection info as they don't require registration to use their service. They do place cookies on your hard drive so the site will not work if you turn off that option in your browser. The information business seems to be full of contradictions.

SEO Should Be Invisible, But Not Hidden
Trying to hide your SEO practices can get you in a lot of trouble with the search engines. It could even get you banned. At the same time, however, your SEO practices should go unnoticed by the casual visitor.
Hiding Div Layers After 5 Seconds (Specified Time - X Seconds)
Many things can be done with layers, one of the most useful thing being the navigational drop down menus. Only problem with many HTML editors including Dreamweaver at the moment is that they do not provide an option to close or hide the layers after a specified time. So most of the time you need to
Private Domain Registration a Must for Every Domain
This article, Private Domain Registration a Must for Every Domain, very successfully explains the need for better privacy in the registration process because a lot of personal information is made public at present.
Making Guestbook
In this tutorial I will show you how to create a nice simple guestbook, I will be using PHP and MySQL for this.
Is Someone Stealing Your Source Code?
Thats a question that worries many people on the Internet. And some people go to great lengths to hide their source code. There are several reasons you might want to conceal the source code of your web pages: => if you have web pages that rank highly in the search engines, you dont want p.....
About Web Hosting and Yahoo Domains
You will find here many information about the web hosting and how it can help you and about Yahoo domains. All the information you find here is just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to find out more about these topics, you have to dig deeper.
Use This JavaScript To Hide Your EMail From Spambots
Ever wander why so many webmasters refuse to insert their email address into the body of their webpages?
SEO Company Pros and Cons - What To Look For
When trying to find a cheap seo company or quality seo company you must look for several things that will make sure you are hiring someone talented and credible. Unfortunately any one out there can say that they perform SEO, however you must learn what tactics they use and what results they can prov...
JavaScript Prompts
Well, lets say you wanted to get somebodys name before they saw the page, and then write their name on your page right before their very eyes... Well, you can do this using a javascript prompt. Heres the command:
Printing Your Website the Right Way
There are so many techniques and methods available to create a user friendly website. The first one is by using a server side routine or print stylesheets. The print version may strip out images and navigation that lose their meanin.......