The Offer
Spokeo is website that offers it’s users the ability to find people and acquire information on them. In this article, we’re going to run through a number of searches and I will give my opinion as we go.
At the end of this article, I’ll show you how to remove your personal information from Spokeo.
Sign-up Process
I went for the 1 month plan for $19.95 and used Paypal as the form of payment. I find that as long as you have proof you canceled (communications or a screenshot or email) it’s easier to challenge any erroneous charges.
Sign-up was relatively easy. Let’s jump into the first search.
People Search – Name
For this search, we’ll use the infamous Turtleboy (Aidan Kearney) as the subject of the search. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be an advanced search option right from the start. It would be nice to have a way to search the name and at least the state in the first search.
I happen to know that the second result is the correct one. Spokeo is telling us that we’ll get the profile, addresses, phones and emails for this person.
There’s some decent initial information here. I know the emails don’t go to him. The addresses, phones and relatives are correct. The court records are show to be an additional $15.00, which would bring my membership to approximately $35.00 total.
For the purpose of this review I’ll make the purchase. If you’re interested in joining my Patreon, it would be a big help, even if it’s just for a month.
I went ahead and clicked on the Background + option and another upsell!
This is absolutely insane and I’m not going to make yet another purchase. We’ll see what the court records reflect.
Court Records
It shows no court records for Aidan. Unfortunately, this is very wrong. There multiple recent cases involving him, both civil and criminal.
Miscellaneous Data
There’s several other pieces of data available on Aidan Kearney. Let’s go through it all.
The work is wrong on both counts.
Maybe with the current donations he’s received, that amount is close, but I doubt it’s going off that. I’m going to rate both points as incorrect.
The addresses, phones and relatives seems correct. As I would blur all that data out, there’s no sense in showing it here.
Other People
I’m going to run several other profiles to give Spokeo a chance. Rather than go through everything again, I’ll list minimal details below.
Sean McDonough – I ran a cell phone reverse on him and it was accurate, with his details, but several other details were inaccurate. Also, there were no court records found and I manually found a DWI in FL, which is very giving with their records.
Marc Randazza – I ran the username “marcorandazza” and got 5 results that were likely incorrect. I put the same username in Whatsmyname.app, a completely free tool and it got 13 results, almost all for the correct person.
Eric Neal – I ran my addresses and name and numbers and there were no results. I’ll explain why in the next section.
Privacy
The reason my information didn’t show up with Spokeo, is because it’s been removed. I chose to do that through a privacy company (Auru) that removes listings through multiple sites, but it can also be done manually.
To opt-out, CLICK HERE (https://www.spokeo.com/optout). What you want to do is find the url to your information and paste it in the box. Then follow the steps to opt-out.
Conclusion
I am very disappointed with Spokeo. I believe it’s a complete waste of money and there’s probably far better tools out there. I’ll try to explore these tools in future articles.
Thanks for reading!
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