Who Is Really Your "Friend" on Facebook? Have You MET Them?

I, as do many others, use a variety of social networks.

I have a tendency to use them more for business purposes, such as promoting new listings, or sales, price changes, my most recent blog, items of that nature.

I do get chastised occasionally from actual friends who want to see more of my non-work life, however!

A recent incident, however, made me re-think some of what I have been publishing, per se, and what information is available about me on the web.

I had a prospect contact me via a social network last year, and inquired about real estate. We never did get a chance to meet due to schedule conflicts, some more realistic than others. Easy come, easy go, was kind of what I thought.

Same prospect, different last name contacts me this year via a different social network. Same employer as well.

Long story short: I have never met this person, even though we both participated in a variety of the same social networks. I'm not sure exactly when I started to feel uncomfortable, (maybe when he pulled down his Facebook page before I could block him? Or, was it the Linked In page?) I googled myself and found a truly frightening website: www.spokeo.com.

Putting in my full name yielded a shocking amount of personal info, down to my astrological sign, the party I vote for and....

Wait for it....

A bird's eye view of my house, with my car in the driveway!

You can't find me on this site anymore, you can remove your listing, but I just had to share. I don't live on a long street, and with my car in the drive, it's much too easy for someone I don't know to find me.

Here's how you can pull your listing, should you desire: go to the site, find your profile, copy the URL, and then go to Privacy, and fill out the required form with the pasted URL of your profile, an email address and a provided Captcha code. This will remove you from the Spokeo site, but not necessarily the other public info aggregator sites out there, but I feel better knowing you have to hunt a little harder to get some of my info!