While a Massachusetts startup says it's offering a way for you to control the personal data the Internet "disgorges," at least one private investigator thinks possible legislation to clamp down a little tighter on leaks of sensitive personal information might end up hurting more than helping citizens.
ZoomInfo has profiles of 25 million people, which summarize what the Web says about each one publicly, and the new service allows you to search your profile and change it for free. "With us," director of consumer products Russell Glass says, "you have the ability to…present yourself how you want to be presented."
That doesn't sit too well with some privacy advocates like Brookline-based Net privacy and security analyst Richard Smith, who called ZoomInfo tantamount to a professional snoop. "Nice people don't snoop on their neighbors," he told reporters.
Tell that to private investigator Bernard Crane. He says if it wasn't for "digital breadcrumbs" dropped from various databases from among the changes in address, work, and even marriages, a southern California client would never have been able to find the mother in Brooklyn that she hadn't seen in a decade.
And Crane says that pending legislation to tighten down access to commercial databases—an issue heightened by recent major identity theft cases involving break-ins into databases owned by ChoicePoint, LexisNexis, Bank of America, and others—could prove hindering for investigators such as himself and their clients.
"How does a doctor do surgery without a scalpel?" Crane said to CNET News. "You've got to have the right tools to do a job."
ZoomInfo—which claims customers including Google, America Online, and Microsoft—says their information comes only from public Web pages and the company doesn't hunt court records or password-protected Websites, and people can also choose to delete their profiles.
ZoomInfo chief executive Jonathan Stern likened the company's doings to what search engines like Google do already, adding, "the winnowing out of irrelevant information, producing better results," because people need good information about others for work and daily life.
Private investigators, however, cause headaches for privacy advocates, thanks to the access they now enjoy, beyond access enjoyed often enough by tothers. "We're concerned generally," said Electronic Privacy Information Center associate director Chris Jay Hoofnagle, "about accountability in this profession."
Other advocates suggest private investigators can get what they need with a little old-fashioned shoe leatherwork and a lot less electronic data rummaging that could do more harm than good. "Private investigators using information brokers are simply lazy," said Privacy Journal editor-publisher Robert Ellis Smith to CNET. "They don't want to do the legwork."
