Andrew O'Leary's dashboard

Amazingly enough, all traces are gone from here and google, but I'll be keeping an eye on it. – Spock is Evil, on August 16, 2008 21:47

except if you do a search on google, it will no doubt lead back to all your information on your page. Which is the problem i have now. – Exodus, on August 16, 2008 13:28

Cool. I really think it's more a matter of balancing emails than avoiding users. I've emailed them many times and, though they missed one or two of my emails, they've been extremely helpful when they responded.

I tried nice, I tried not-so-nice.

As I have just posted, changing my name to Jay Bhatti achieved the desired result in minutes.

Yo, I think the team has been bombarded with lots of emails since it's been growing like crazy this year. Lots of new users and questions for them to take care of.

I say send them a nice email to remind them and they'll take care of you.

When I say "private" I also include publicly available info that is not associated with the identity of the individual it's about. For example, if you didn't reveal your identity on your blog, but you did reveal a bunch of non-identifying facts about yourself that were available other places on the web where those facts were associated with your identity, Spock could form the probable conclusion that the two individuals were the same individual. Then Spock could include further facts you reveal about yourself on the anonymous blog on your Spock page. I'm not saying Spock does this, but it's possible and would explain how they got info about me from my myspace page which, as far as I know, has never been associated with my name. Make sense?

This should be a source of concern for Spock, since while California law protects companies like Spock from libel suits when the false info they present is only pulled from elsewhere online, the law doesn't protect them if they compile false info on an individual from some places where that false info is not presented as being about the individual. If they do this, they've gone beyond merely showing what's elsewhere on the web. – LetsSueSpock, on August 05, 2008 00:28

LetsSueSpock: What I'm asking is, how would Spock take information from private sites? They're private -- it's not like Spock has an all-access pass to the Internet. When it crawls the Internet, it's just like you surfing it, but faster. One scenario that could reflect what you're talking about is if a public profile has been recently privatized. Say I had a MySpace profile that was public, and now I make that page private. Spock will have it there until it crawls MySpace again and sees that the profile has become private. There are two actions I can take at this point: if the profile is mine, I can request that it be taken down. If not, I can rest assured that Spock is working hard to refresh its index and take care of the problem. If you have an actual example of what you mentioned that you don't think falls into this scenario, I'd be interested to see it. – catgofire, on August 04, 2008 19:18

Don'tlikespock. If you would like to be removed from Spock please the question thread - Remove me from Spock! With regards to your other comments, as noted above, Spock is a search engine that works similar to Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc in that we crawl and index publish publicly available information. One of the many advantages of Spock is that we enable people to take control of their search result and remove any irrelevant tags, web links, pictures, etc. We are well aware that people don't necessarily display everything about themselves, which is why we enable people to claim their search result. Still, at the end of the day it's really up to a person to be aware of their web presence and what is made available about them (if you don't want information shown than you shouldn't display or post it- or at least make sure it's private) – I Love Spock, on August 04, 2008 17:21

(2nd try. Couldn't tell if first posted. They didn't ask for validation, etc.)

Catgofire, you are a wise-ass. Nobody likes a wise-ass. And unfortunately for you, you are not wise, which just makes you an ass.

Catgofire says:

"If it's not public, how did Spock get it? It's not like Spock broke into your house and stole your information"

How could Spock get info that's not public? By taking it from private sites, you idiot. No one here should be presuming that what Spock is doing is ethical. Here's one way Spock could obtain private info about individuals. They code algorithms that correlate info publicly associated with someone with similar info associated with someone whose identity is private. If the correlation between the two sets of info matches to a sufficiently high degree, they can make a probabilistic assumption that the private someone is the same person as the other public someone. Easy as pie. What do you think they employ all their scientists for?

Catgofire also said:

"... Everything on Spock is from somewhere else (public) on the Internet."

This is of course false, and easy to demonstrate as such. To test whether info on Spock is public, just copy a statistically improbable phrase from the suspected private info on a Spock page and Google it. If Google ONLY shows that phrase on the Spock page you copied it from, then obviously Spock is getting the info from someplace that you, a member of the public, can't get it from. Such info then is clearly not public info.

Somebody needs to file a class-action lawsuit and shut these MFs down. – LetsSueSpock, on August 04, 2008 16:52

and its kind of odd how none of the employees here don't have their birth dates and where exactly they live like the rest of us do. I guess you guys like your privacy too! take me off your website IMMEDIATELY

you have a horrible website you are advertising information that you have no right to! someone should report you to the cops and i think the media should do a story about how horrible you are!

To flag your search result on Spock you must first "CLAIM" your search result- see the image below for the location



Once claimed you can flag your search result located in the same location as the claim button. Once flagged, please note "SOURCE REMOVED" in the comments field.

Hi Love,
Why haven't people learned that Opt-In is the best course of business rather than Opt-Out??? Even if someday you DO learn this and modify your business model, you've already soured a LOT of people on your service. We do not trust you now, and it's going to take a LOT to change our minds. – billycovington, on June 13, 2008 19:03

Hi Bill,

In order to flag a search result you must first claim your search result. This way Spock can ensure that the person requesting deletion is the correct person, and also that they've taken the necessary steps for removal (this ensures that they won't be reindexed).

In your case since your Myspace and Facebook have indeed been removed, than you should e-mail info@corp.spock.com with your specific search result and explain that your Myspace and Facebook had been previously removed.

While we're working on indexing more regularly on Spock a few things you may want to consider are that 1) if a Facebook or Myspace account has been removed than the link on your search result will send someone to an invalid link. 2) As with any information on the Web it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. So if I create a Myspace page claiming to be the inventor of the cheddar cheese or the heir apparent to the King of Luxembourg, than it wouldn't take much common sense to figure out that you were kidding. The goal of Spock is to merely direct people to where you are most likely on the Web. 3) Spock has a long list of inappropriate terms that are not allowed on the site, so even if you were to own a racially charged or sexist Myspace page with a bunch of swear words and nudity, that information won't end up on the site. 4) Spock enables people to claim their search result so you can easily change the fact that "The Notebook" is not your favorite movie, or that you're not really into competitive gardening.

Oh yeah, I am also EXTREMELY ANGRY.

I do not see where to "flag" the search results. WHY is my old Myspace and Facebook information on this site when I deleted those accounts MONTHS ago???? THIS SERVICE IS A VIOLATION OF PRIVACY AND IS UTTERLY DISGRACEFUL.

This still isn't working. – Emily, on June 13, 2008 00:25

I Love Spock - thank you for your quick assistance. I appreciate it.

Hi,

If you feel that private information is being displayed about you, there are a few ways you can remove it. The quickest way(assuming you've claimed your search result) is to vote down the information. If you are still having difficulty please e-mail info@corp.spock.com with your search result and specific problem and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

I'm extremely frustrated with this - I was fine when it was regular stuff that was available online, but now my private accounts that emails are hidden are being put on here - things that you have to be not only logged in, but also be listed as a personal contact to find.

This is illegal and against all privacy laws. There will be a class action lawsuit available soon if people are allowed to add non-public information to public profiles.