Spock.com Creepy in a Vulcan Web Meld Kind of Way
May 15th, 2008 | Published in Web + Tech | 3 Comments
I was tipped off to the existence of a new “People Search” engine known as Spock today. Only instead of being a cool, new innovative search product or social technology, it just weirded me the crap out.
You see, Spock has basically scraped all of the information that you may have posted within the walled gardens of the big social networks (mostly MySpace with a little Facebook and LinkedIn thrown in for good measure) and somehow accurately collects all of it under your name. The idea being that you can go to Spock, create an account and then “claim” your own identity in order to round out the information that they have gathered and exercise some measure of control over it. However, all it managed to do was creep me out in an Orwellian 1984 kind of way.
I’m used to “opting-in” to social networks and providing my information willingly to a site and I am fully aware that you can Google your name and probably find the same information, but this just feels different. I am even looking forward to true data portability across all of the web once the big boys, like the newly announced Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect, learn to work together through the OpenSocial platform (even though Facebook just banned Google’s product from using their API, that’s the spirit!).
This just seems like a social network that is scraping my information and posting it, using clever technology (I’ll give them that), for anyone and everyone to see. On Facebook, I can stay private, MySpace gives me the option to make my profile private, LinkedIn is even more restrictive, and on and on. This is just out there with no permission or “opting-in” on my part.
Go ahead and look up your name and see what comes up: a picture, link to a profile, web links and news about you? Yeh, effing skin-crawling.
The next question is: If a site like Spock can scrape my personal data from other sites, why is it so hard for sites to share that same info when I actually ask them to do so?
Whatever.
Go listen to the new M83 album Saturdays=Youth. Stream my favorite song so far, “Skin of the Night” at Last.fm.
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May 18th, 2008at 7:46 am(#)
so what does it mean if it doesn’t find you? do i exist? clearly i have horrible seo, or maybe i’m just really good at protecting my identity. when i google myself my blog, myspace and facebook never come up. why is that oh wise one?
May 18th, 2008at 8:40 pm(#)
@cami: because you have like four different names.
May 19th, 2008at 4:11 pm(#)
Hi,
I came across your blog and wanted to help clarify some questions you may have about Spock.com.
1) the goal of Spock is to ultimately help people search for other people. Our founders created Spock out of frustration with using Google for people searches, so they created a site where you can search by name, e-mail, or tag (where you went to school, your occupation, etc). Spock also provides links to other places you’re on the Web, news feeds, etc.
2) The information on Spock is all publicly available information. We do use alot of the Social Networking sites because they’re ultimately a great place to find relevant information.
3) Spock lets you claim your search result and edit out irrelevant information, and contribute more relevant information.
4) Spock respects people’s right to privacy which is why we give people the option to remove their search result if they wish (even though it’s a great platform to promote yourself)
5) It’s important to be aware of where you are on the Web and your overall online identity. It’s also important to look into the services you register with, as sites such as Myspace, Friendster, etc are sites where even though your entire profile may be private, their is still a public listing.
Please feel free to e-mail me Patrick@corp.spock.com if you have any questions.