As I prepared to publish my second book, I began removing myself from these databases, only to discover that sites like are much more pernicious than the printed white pages of old. Last fall, I set out on a journey of my own. Tunon had started her quest hoping to distance herself from a traumatizing situation, but instead she was continually forced to relive it. “Everything you do, you have to reshare your story,” she says. Other companies required her to send in a copy of the civil protection order. In some cases she had to speak with several employees at the same company before a site agreed to remove her information.
#PEOPLE SEARCHY HOW TO#
For the next few years, she spent roughly 2 hours a week researching the subject, learning how to petition data brokers and other institutions to keep her information out of her former partner’s hands. Through her sister, who once worked for a data broker, Tunon had learned just how much personal information was available to anyone through a quick web search.įeeling scared and helpless, Tunon embarked on a campaign to scrub her contact information from the internet. She filed a civil protection order against her harasser, but she knew she wasn’t safe while he could still find her address online. When she changed her email address and phone number, he switched to messaging her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
She moved to Virginia and eventually got a new job, but her former partner kept contacting her. Jessica Tunon fled an emotionally abusive relationship in Florida in 2007. These sites make it almost impossible to hide. They can lead stalkers to victims or escalate online harassment to real-world assault. They often encourage voyeurism with come-ons such as, “Arrest Records, Marriage Records, Contact Information and More!” and “We’ve uncovered sensitive personal information about Mara.” They can be used to commit identity theft and to dox people, publicizing sensitive or personal information to make someone a target for harassment or violence.
They help police locate suspects, reconnect people with long-lost friends, and aid adoptees in finding their birth parents. I have used them myself as a reporter to find contact information for sources.īut these sites can create serious hazards, too. In most cases, it doesn’t take a police union tweeting your personal information-as happened to Chiara de Blasio, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter-for it to surface. As the reaction to recent Black Lives Matter protests has underscored, the threat faced by women of color is even more acute. And yet, as I discovered when I tried to conceal the details of my life from public view, going unlisted is now a herculean task. As a journalist I have covered conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and militant nationalists, and like many women who occupy public positions, I’ve been the target of vicious social media and email messages. “I don’t want people to think that it’s a woman living here alone,” she told me.Ī generation on, women and vulnerable groups can add online harassment to the threats faced by our mothers and grandmothers. She worried about being targeted by creeps. Before omitting her address, she’d gotten hate mail. She was single and working as an immigrant-rights advocate in Minneapolis. The entry revealed our phone number, but the address line was blank, and the spot for a first name held only my mother’s initial.
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As a child in the 1980s, I remember staring at my mother’s listing in the white pages, which back then was an actual book issued by the phone company and printed on white paper.
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