No creepier than the rest of modern life, I guess

Deb sent me a link to something called ZabaSearch this afternoon. And like a lot of "How to be a Stalker from the comfort of your own home" sites, you just type in a name and state, hit search, and you're provided with a list of possible hits. ZabaSearch gives you the name, as much as they know of the birthdate, address, and phone number. Click on the name and you can "search the web" for further information, click on the address and you can see a satellite image of the neighborhood. Part of the "search the web" feature is a link to an image search.

So just for fun, after I typed in my own name, I typed in the names of a few other people. I was able to retrieve photos of folks I barely know, addresses of same, some date-of-birth info. Most of the stuff I got was about what I'd expect, some was educational. (Hmmmm. I didn't realize she was older than me.....)

But, you know, outside of feeling like a minor Law and Order character for a few minutes ("Interesting. Can you open his e-mails for us?" "Sure, this system is pretty simple." "Thanks - hey, Ed - look at this!"), most of this same stuff is available many, many places on the web. Heck, as a comparison, a few seconds with Google Image Search gave me the company name, address, and job title of the wife of a friend. I can find out on line how much my neighbors pay for their houses. AOL is happy to tell me when my buddies are on line - in fact, AOL used to tell me how long they'd been on line, so I'd know at a glance if Mollie had been on for 10 minutes or 3 hours. And AOL will still tell me if an e-mail I've sent to another AOL member has been read or not. They aren't yet able to tell me "yep, read that, and deleted it, so forget getting an answer," but that day will come.

There is, theoretically, an opt out on ZabaSearch, but - again - the information is already out there. The only way to truly opt out is to have an unlisted phone number and no e-mail or webpages and to work for a company that doesn't believe in posting its staff's pictures on the internet. Creeped out as I am by the thought of anyone with a few bucks and some idle curiosity (or not so idle) ordering a "background check" on me, there's not that much I can do about it. So I'm going to keep my paranoia in reasonable check.

We don't yet live in glass houses, but, thanks to the web, we all have great big picture windows. And no curtains.

Wave to the people - they're watching you!