Every day we give our information everywhere. According to a recent Rolling Stone issue (Sept ‘10), Google has enough personal information on all of us to overthrow all of the governments of the world. It raises an interesting question: what can people really do with my personal information?

I know my information is never 'safe' online, but what should I pay attention to to be safe?

I know my name, email phone and address are ‘out there’. Obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be inundated with contacts from marketers, wrong numbers and spam email.

But what can someone really do to me with this information? When I narrowed it down, I realized there are really 3 things that matter to me in terms of privacy.

1. I want to control which marketing messages I get. No waste. If you are gathering my information on the web, you better not be selling it, trading it or abusing it somehow.

2. I must monitor my credit, bank accounts and other pertinent information. If I see something out of the ordinary, I need to take responsibility for it, or contact authorities.

3. I should keep personal information, like my full name, address or kids pets and other loved ones off of the public social networking sites. People are weird sometimes!

I remember years ago moving into a new apartment. I had just turned on my home phone service, and plugged in my phone. It wasn’t 5 seconds (literally)  before the phone rang. It was a telemarketer! That was the last time I ever used a home phone. Since then, I’ve had only a cell phone. I made the mistake once of giving the number to an auto dealer, and now they call me all the time. Other than that, my cell phone has been pretty much for personal and business use only. I love it.

One of my friends started the site Phonebooks.com and recently forwarded me this press release about the addition of 2.4 million new numbers to their database. The site is designed to allow people to find other people – via cell phone. More than 1 in 7 U.S. households now use wireless phones as their primary phone system. As more and more people use mobile phones as their ‘default’ number, being able to look up a cell number is increasingly important. Cell numbers are not typically included in traditional phone directories, and so he created the directory to help people find people via cell numbers.

Phone directories have come a long way!

Sites like Phonebooks.com work to aggregate cell phone records and offer people several services around the growing database, including the ability to search for someone via their cell number, locate a cell number or even remove your cell number from the database. (In addition you can contact the Do Not Call Registry to get removed from most major call lists).

New cell phone directories are here to stay – and have become a necessary tool in modern communication. Know that you can control which lists you show up on – and if you are like me and don’t want your cell phone listed, consider checking the database to see if you show up.

The Social Networking giant Facebook.com announced today that the privacy settings are going to be made much easier for people to understand and manage. 



After facing a firestorm of privacy complaints the announced a new ‘privacy pledge’ today. Much of the current outrage comes from Facebook’s functionality that shows the things you “Like” to random people on 3rd party websites such as CNN.com. A consumer group recently formed to encourage users to “quit Facebook” over these recent privacy issues.

“Sometimes we move too fast – and after listening to recent concerns, we’re responding,” wrote Mr Zuckerberg.

“The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information.

“Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark,” he wrote.

Phone calls, emails, junk mail.

Pile on top of this all of the commercials and ads we are exposed to and I think it’s safe to say most people get way more marketing messages each day than they want.

Not only is this wasteful to our time and to the environment, it can be really intrusive.

The good news is that all marketers must respect your personal privacy, and you have the right to say whether or not you get contacted.

Junk mail got you down? We can help!