A while back a colleague of mine, Beth Terry, brought my attention to the website www.spokeo.com. Spokeo is a site that literally trolls public records and the internet to find information about every single person, including you. If you haven’t done this already, go to Spokeo.com and search for yourself. Scroll down and you will find that there likely is a picture of your house, the value of the property, a meter on your estimated economic health and wealth level, your estimated household income, and age. This site gathers information on the properties you own as well as records of marriage or divorce, voter registration, legal activity, and information from your listing on social media sites like LinkedIn or Facebook. And, the data is not always correct – but it is out there for people to see!

So, if you don’t want information, whether accurate or inaccurate, appearing on this site you CAN remove it. Just go to www.spokeo.com. Search for yourself. Then go to the bottom of the page and in very small, light print you will find a link called Privacy. Towards the bottom of this link you will see their privacy statement. In the middle there is a link to another page where you can request to be removed. You will need the URL from your information page so make sure to copy it before you go here. And when you’re done, check for your spouse and kids as there may just be a listing for them that needs to be removed too. In this era of information accessible everywhere, we can and NEED to protect ourselves and our private information. If I wanted the price of my house out there for everyone to see – I would have posted it on my website.