Here's a nice new bit of creepiness!

[memoriamvictus]

A short while ago I received an e-mail with the subject heading "You were searched on Rapleaf". I was initially going to dismiss it as spam, but I was curious enough to check it out, and I'm not sure if I'm glad or sorry I did.

Rapleaf is an "online reputation lookup" service that seems to trawl most of the user-heavy websites available on the '

Comments

[kimouski]

Hmm. They didn't have anything on my e-mail address, but told me to come back in an hour. VERY creepy.

[memoriamvictus]

The number of times an address is searched definitely has some kind of impact on the site; a friend's profile rating went from a one to a three during the initial "Oh my God, where did it get my phone number?" conversation.

I'm not going to follow up myself, as I don't want to sic it on anyone, but I'd be very interested to learn whether it goes out and trolls for info on you now that you've given it something to go on.

[kimouski]

It did. :(

To me, it's information I don't mind sprinkling here and there at various sites, but to see it all together is a bit unsettling.

[memoriamvictus]

Ugh.

That's the thing. I want to be mad about this... but, at the end of the day, it's all information we're putting out there willingly; they're just collating it, not much different from the Yellow Pages. I'm really happy they seem to stick to social networking sites; this is going to make e-pestering easy enough as it is, but just imagine how much fun it would be if you popped that obnoxious girl from Chem 112's e-mail in and found out she also wrote underage Harry Potter fanfic.

Makes me really, really glad I've been religious about keeping fannish e-mail/IM/WHOIS/etc. separate from everything else!

[freakout]

oh man, that is so not cool. it doesn't know i have a livejournal, thank fuck. but, i knew i had that other e-mail address i didn't share with anyone for a reason!

[memoriamvictus]

That's the really insidious thing; people see it and go, "Oh, I wonder how this works!", thus adding themselves. Nasty little thing; I do wonder where the revenue is coming from, as the site doesn't seem to be ad-supported. [/tinfoil]