Everyday we get calls from consumers looking to do a background check on their girlfriend, boyfriend, old college buddy, teacher, nanny and even themselves. Unfortunately, our services are limited to employment background checks, we only work for companies and organizations. Interestingly enough, I was using on of my favorite websites, digg.com, and found this article written by the Wall Street Journal, “New Sites Make it Easier to Spy on Your Friends.”
By VAUHINI VARA
May 13, 2008; Page D1
If you are still relying on Google to snoop on your friends, you are behind the curve.
Armed with new and established Web sites, people are uncovering surprising details about colleagues, lovers and strangers that often don’t turn up in a simple Internet search. Though none of these sites can reveal anything that isn’t already available publicly, they can make it much easier to find. And most of them are free.
Zaba Inc.’s ZabaSearch.com turns up public records such as criminal history and birthdates. Spock Networks Inc.’s Spock.com and Wink Technologies Inc.’s Wink.com are “people-search engines” that specialize in digging up personal pages, such as social-networking profiles, buried deep in the Web. Spokeo.com is a search site operated by Spokeo Inc., a startup that lets users see what their friends are doing on other Web sites. Zillow Inc.’s Zillow.com estimates the value of people’s homes, while the Huffington Post’s Fundrace feature tracks their campaign donations. Jigsaw Data Corp.’s Jigsaw.com, meanwhile, lets people share details with each other from business cards they’ve collected — a sort of gray market for Rolodex data.
