Please be aware of this website: https://www.mylife.com They show a lot of information about all of us. If you search your name in Google, this website will show up with a lot of personal data. We need to collectively act to shut this website down!
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That site “scrapes” information from other sites. It is simply amassing it.
I recently decided to help a friend who’d become obsessed with a man, thinking he was stalking her in her neighborhood and on her computer. My goal was to show her that he didn’t live a few blocks away from her, as she’d thought, and that he was a respected, productive member of society. Not someone who drove cars for a living (yes, that’s what she thought) and had no life.
By doing searches, I was able to get his home and work addresses (from the White Pages), find out about his property ownership and mortgagor (from the Bureau of Conveyances), see pictures of his workplace and coworkers (from Google Maps), learn what awards he’d received and where and what he’d taught.
That kind of information exists for each of us.
Re mylife: if you subscribe, you are given information not only about yourself but also your neighbors–and you get updates on them.
This is really creepy.
We need to get back or control of our privacy and check the unrestraint and intrusive mining or collecting of our data and the use of it.
@richard1, nowadays every time we do something government related, our information goes into a database. I read yesterday that instead of using facial-recognition software to identify everyone, the federal government will start mining the motor-vehicle-registration data of states. Since we have to take pictures for our IDs, the government has a handy source of images of us.
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@patm The U.S. government through the State Department rolled out new rules last May 2019 to nearly all foreigners applying for U.S. visa to disclose the handles they’ve used over the past 5 years of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, My Space and 14 other social-media platforms. The reason for the program is to help identify threats to the U.S. But critics say that it will empower the U.S. government to collect data that could lead people to bureaucratic limbo or their visa denied. Worst of all data could be used to discriminate against people in a large scale because of their political and religious views. This is really creepy. This is just one of many reasons why we have to guard and always vigilant and fight for our privacy. The misuse, abuse, exploitation etc. are always the reality.
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@richard1, I agree with you. My comments here have maybe been misinterpreted.
When government uses its powers to curb our rights–such as the right to privacy–we should respond.
When mylife amasses data from public sources and then attempts to sell this package, that is commerce and we have the right to accept it or refuse it.
What I was trying to show with my anecdote is that because a lot of information about us is already available, some of our private lives is public. We may not like it–and it may not be good for society in the long run–but that is reality. Self-awareness, self-control, education, mindfulness–these are all tools at our disposal. Learning to use them wisely and effectively, I would say, is what this forum is all about.
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That has always been it’s just easier now with these aggregates, check out
There are tons of these sites. Lexisnexis has been around forever and is much worse imo.
@patm I agree with that “if government curb our rights we must respond”. If you read some comments and articles about mylife.com this website is like a scam. The site has been plagued by legal woes since its inception. I think this is a kind of company you would not be happy to collect and market your personal information. With the privacy issue that is a reality our private lives are public but we can do something more than personal responsibility and accountability, we demand corporate ethical practices and designs and accountability. And the government intervention as needed. Americans have been for a long time now vulnerable when they venture online. Companies are free today to monitor and collect data about them from across the web and the real world. Data which is use to sell them anything, set their insurance rates,influence their votes, etc. All of these collection and manipulation behind the scenes without users’ knowledge. It takes data breaches and abuses that this moment has come to pass federal laws governing data. American congress is considering several legislation to strengthen privacy rights. Better late than never. Europe has already set a privacy global standard, the GDPR.The fact that the biggest tech companies are complying everywhere of the new european privacy rules means europeans did more favor to the americans than their own congress, although americans cannot avail specifically of legal rights under GDPR. This is the right moment that the americans should pass laws that strengthen the privacy rights of its people.
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As @Broodwich points out, there are many such aggregators. Slay one, and others spring up in its place. Is this a worthy battle for us to fight?
I say there are better battles for us: being smarter, more circumspect and aware in our online behavior, teaching others to be so–this is where our energy and time should go.
But of course these are individual choices and should be respected however one decides.
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@richard1, I thought about this some more and realized there is a critical element here that we can expand on: how aggregators bully their ways into our lives via bad business practices.
Do you know the true story of the young man who purchased an engagement ring via overstock.com, another kind of aggregator? Before he could propose to his girlfriend, overstock posted the purchase to his Facebook page, informing her and all of his friends and spoiling the beautiful surprise. He was furious.
I have some personal experience with mylife and will write about that later. For now, maybe we can reconsider @arzu’s original post with the goal of making others aware of how aggregators in general manipulate and compromise us.
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I wrote to ask them to delete “me.” Here’s what they said:
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ to request removal of your Public Background Report & Reputation Score.
Unfortunately the information on your Public Background page cannot be removed as it is gathered from public records, government, and other public sources for the purpose of helping people learn more about others for business, dating and other reasons.
As MyLife is also here to help you monitor what’s public about you, and help you improve your Reputation, we offer several services that we recommend you use to:
-
Editing your public information -
See and delete your information on other sites you can’t control -
Verify and correct your Background Report
Next Steps:
Please contact a Customer Care Representative to upgrade to Premium Membership by calling 888-704-1900 or sign up online at www.MyLife.com
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Sincerely,
Ray B.
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@patm I think that is why we need some kind of regulation with regards to data collection and the use of it. It is a sort of wild wild west. The story about a young man who bought an engagement ring I don’t have particular idea but it just showing that anything goes out there. Yes it is important that we are aware of this scammer like company and keep away from it and spread the words too.
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Thank you for bringing this to our attention @arzu. I’m actually feeling too scared to even try to run a search on this site!
@lisajeane the words that I think are key in the response you received are “gathered” and “for the purpose of.” The very same words that enable many tech companies to do all sorts of funky things with our data.
I think this raises a very big question about consent - what are we actually consenting to when we consent to, say, use Google Maps. I would imagine that most of the world’s population thinks it is consenting to Google Maps simply knowing our position in space, not that it is consenting to a random website then “gathering” that information “for the purpose of” helping people learn more about us.
I for one don’t have any interest in “helping people learn more about” me “for business, dating and other reasons.” But the big question is, how do I selectively consent when I am not empowered to do so by the companies making the products that have now become nearly indispensable to us all?
It may be something only regulators can address, I’m not sure. Sadly, I don’t know the answer.
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Its said a lot here but eventually smartphones and the marketing and telco price gouging will all have the light shined on it like cigarette smoking and what the tobacco industry was doing to our politics and culture (worldwide).
Smartphones and war on drugs and war industry, militarization of police, all of these elite vices eventually will be exposed at their fat cats’ gravy train will ultimately derail. Just a matter of time and 5g imo will irradiate people / be much less secure if that’s even possible.
It’s addiction.