You. Online.

Do you know where you are online? You might immediately think of the sites where you post and control your own information and profile -- for example: Facebook, Twitter or Myspace. But there are other sites out there that post information about you that you may not know about.

Often called aggregators, these sites build profiles about you based on information from online and offline sources such as phone directories, social networks, photo albums, marketing surveys, mailing lists, government censuses, real estate listings, and business websites. These sites often include demographic data, property values and estimated interests gleaned from the information they've collected. These profiles can be used for any number of reasons, including marketing – advertisers can often buy detailed lists from these sites and start mailing or calling you.

To see for yourself, do a search for your name – and if you are a married woman, try both your maiden and married names. For the best results put your name in quotes in the search box (e.g.:"Jane Smith").


If you find a profile with your name attached, here’s what else may be available about you:
- Your age
- Your address
- Your marital status
- Assumptions about your interests
- Your children (and their age ranges) or other relatives
- Your estimated income
- Photos you may have posted online
- Aerial photos of your house

When you see all this information posted about you, it can feel very intrusive. The aggregators may even use your own photos if you haven't set up the proper safeguards on photo-sharing sites.

To make matters worse, this information isn't always correct. The estimated income may just be an estimate based on where you live and can be wildly inaccurate. And these sites often use outdated housing values, from back in the days when the real estate market was good. So, while you may be tempted to jump for joy that your house is listed as being worth significantly more than what you currently thought, keep in mind, this is also why you may be getting piles of junk mail for luxury vacations and cars. And if that’s not bad enough, incorrect house value and income estimates, paired with your address, information about your family and aerial photos of your house can be an open invitation to burglars, stalkers, or other predators.

Some of the sites that may have profiles about you include Spokeo, ZabaSearch, RapLeaf, Pipl, Intellius, MyLife, and PeopleSearchPro. If you find your information posted on a site like one of these and you’d like to update or remove it, check the site for a link to Help, FAQ, or Privacy Policy. Most sites will have information or links to correct or completely remove listings.

The bad news? The request to remove your information usually only affects the one specific site you are on. If information about you is publicly available and you want it completely deleted, you will need track it to the source of the problem. For example, if your name, address and phone number are listed in the white pages, those can easily be associated with your social networking profile, as well as things like magazine subscriptions you have or programs you are affiliated with. None of the sites listed above provide the source of the data about you, so even if you delete your profile from those sites, your information is likely still out there, somewhere, and it’s likely another site is or could be displaying it.

The good news? There are companies out there like ReputationDefender that can help remove you from many of these websites, all at once.