Talk:Spokeo

This article was nominated for deletion on 14 April 2009 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

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Social network(s)

I followed the links in this article to "social network" and found some interesting stuff, but nothing (unless I missed it) that seemed to describe its usage in this article, which I take to refer to social network service. I also found the references to "social network" in this article confusing - is it a social network, or isn't it? Or are they using the term in two different senses? I feel a disambiguation page for "social networks" might be better than the "not to be confused with" sentence... Jpaulm (talk) 15:36, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Spam

This company is most notable for spamming people (http://www.google.com/search?q=spokeo+spam). They garnered a number of positive reviews before changing their business model to one that is, at best, unethical. They continue to promote these reviews on their site, and use them as sources for edits to the article.

There is no mention of this in the article, because the article is constantly edited by the company themselves under various sock puppet accounts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/76.203.122.178 (IP address registered to Spokeo, Inc)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Man4Prez (sockpuppet)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Twhman (sockpuppet)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/76.79.164.172
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/76.191.194.207

akaDruid (talk) 13:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Spam Counterargument

Edited by Ray Chen, co-founder of Spokeo. Up until 3/2008, we had encouraged our users to invite their friends. There was a clear opt-in page, and we showed a list of friends who would be invited once the user opted-in to the invite process. After receiving some complaints, we drastically changed the viral features within Spokeo. Now emails are only sent to your friends when:

User initiates the invite. Single email sent.
User shares a news item. Single email sent.
User responds to a promotion to invite their friends in order to obtain a free Spokeo premium account.

Multiple entries do exist for the google query 'spokeo spam,' but this is true of any social networking service. Any social service that processes a huge number of user registrations will get its share of user complaints:

The Spokeo wikipedia page should be a source of information that is uniquely relevant to Spokeo. Any opinions on the social network industry in general should be directed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network.

I have reached out to akaDruid via his personal contact listed at http://www.thedruid.co.uk/. Our wikipedia presence is of upmost importance to us, and I am trying hard for a mutually agreeable resolution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.191.192.210 (talk) 18:02, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You may wish to read WP:COI. Your edits violate Wikipedia policy. Rees11 (talk) 02:16, 26 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rewrite / conflict of interest

This article has been posted to Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. -I am new to Wikipedia, but I think putting comments in about the ease or difficulty of deleting your profile by putting them in like 'citations' is deceiving--the jury is not out on that yet--I just tried to delete mine (4/30/2010) a few dozen times and found it impossible. Followed directions to a "t". Those 'comments' tend to read like an advertisement. Conflict of interst there?([use:wolvertine;akawolvertine]) 21:47, 30 April 2010 (UTC) Wolvertine (talk) 01:51, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As per the Conflict of Interest guidelines, I intend to "reduce an article to the basic identifying information", with some more recent sources.

For any employees of Spokeo wishing to add information, please declare your interests on your user pages, and submit proposed edits for review on the article talk page.akaDruid (talk) 14:42, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This has now been done. I struggled to find any reputable sources covering the current site (i.e. from the last couple of years) but I've got a couple which mention it, one of which is quite an in depth review. akaDruid (talk) 15:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I like it much better now. I linked Social network aggregation, since I'm guessing most readers won't know what a "profile aggregator" is. I'm not sure it's the same thing, but that page does list Spokeo as an example. Rees11 (talk) 15:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I used profile aggregator because that was the term in the source, but I think social network aggregator is a better, more generic term, so I've changed the wording to that too. akaDruid (talk) 06:32, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like such a shame to have a hatchet taken to the article, but it's probably unavoidable. The article was tainted as it was controlled by Spokeo employees, in a blatant manner. Hopefully the article can be rebuilt in a balanced way without their influence. I would urge some very aggressive monitoring of the article to prevent it from returning to the state it was in before. If Spokeo employees continue to do what they were doing before they should be reported individually to COI and their edits reverted. We should never have a situation on Wikipedia where employees of a company are controlling the content that goes into their article. -- Atama ^chat 22:42, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I do have a question actually. I wonder how necessary it was to chop the article down as much as it was. There were a number of bad sources, such as blogs, but there were some great sources as well. Newsweek, an ABC news affiliate, the Wall Street Journal, Cnet... Was it absolutely necessary to remove those portions? I noticed that the 2 sources that remain are very critical of the company (or this kind of company), please remember that removing reliable sources and replacing them with negative ones is at least as bad as what was being done by the Spokeo employees before. NPOV is NPOV, whether positive or negative. -- Atama ^chat 23:07, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're absolutely right, NPOV is absolutely essential. The problems I had with those sources were: Newsweek, looked like a blog that happened to be hosted by a news website, Cnet, very old story, site is completely different now, WSJ, trivial mention of the site, KGO-TV, didn't realise it was even a news outlet :) (I'm not from USA). I've added the KGO-TV article as a source, since it contains a fair bit of info, and I've no objection to adding the WSJ and Newseek sources too if you think they add value. The article needs some actual content, but I've no time to work it on it now. Also I don't want to introduce any bias, since I have a low opinion of them for spamming WP, and for advertising their product as a tool for snooping on employees. akaDruid (talk) 09:17, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Founder's info on Spokeo

I'm going to revert the claim that the Spokeo founder removed his own information from the site because I don't believe the provided reference (http://www.spokeo.com/search?q=Harrison%20Tang) supports the claim. Simply searching the site for his information and not finding it does not prove that a) it was ever there, or b)that he (personally) removed it. Ucanlookitup (talk) 14:20, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Technology Section

The technology section that I removed was cited as coming from the companies about page. In some cases the about page does not include the claims made here.

For example:"Spokeo utilizes deep web crawlers to aggregate data, automating a process that would take months to complete manually." This claim does not appear on the about page.

In another example, "All Spokeo searches are conducted in real time. Unlike conventional search engines Spokeo does not pre-crawl the Web, but retrieves content in real time as it is searched. Although users have to wait longer to retrieve the data, it is more up-to-date."

This claim is actually contradicted by the reference which says "Consequently, Spokeo’s data might not be completely up-to-date."

In other cases the claims have little to do with technology but are simply marketing material.

"Spokeo's Premium membership features a tracking system. After an account is added to a Friends list, Spokeo regularly checks for new updates from the account, providing a notification in the update counter to allow users to keep track of new information", or

"The technology reduces data acquisition costs and provides the information free of cost. Spokeo's search algorithm allows users to search by name, then state, and city and organizes the results by location."

Ucanlookitup (talk) 18:29, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Continuous link vandalism

After looking at the history, the links on this page have been continuously swapped to a scam site. The last act of vandalism has remained up since September before I reverted it today. I recommend some preventive measures being utilized to avoid this in the future. SchizoidNightmares (talk) 18:34, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]