Zabasearch

Factual Questions
1

I found out about this site in September (here, maybe?), and sent them an email requesting that they remove my information. I got a message from a friend today, went back and rechecked, and my information is still there (and more complete than before!) :smack: :mad:

What recourse do I have? How can I force them to remove my information and keep it out!?? They are facilitating a jerk who needs no help keeping track of me.

2

From ZabaSearch’s privacy policy:

bolding mine

3

Welcome to the Internet age. I don’t think you can force anyone to keep your information completely private because it comes from public data sources a lot of the time and they have the various constitutional freedoms that we enjoy in this country.

My mother, who has a doctorate, is one of those big chain e-mail senders. One of hers was about the horrors of Zabasearch. I sent her yet another reply of this type explaining that they didn’t invent this concept and they are far from the only information supplier of this type on the internet. There are literally dozens and they have existed since the early days of the net. Before that, they existed as background check services.

I don’t really understand the outrage at Zabasearch in particular. There have always been phone books (libraries even have them on microfilm as a research tool), court records (can’t keep those private), newspaper archives, and countless other sources of similar information. Services like Zabasearch may make that information easier to get but that is hardly a crime.

4

Well. Lucky me. :rolleyes:

Thanks, guys.

5

Here is part of the glurge that my mother sent out to a huge list of people regarding Zabasearch:

“Type in your name and check…you’ll be SHOCKED as I was! I urge you to forward this email to family and friends. Check to see if your name and information is in their database. If so and you want it removed, send them a fax to zabasearch.com to request it be removed. I do not know how our names are appearing there, but I checked my own and a few other random ones, and they are all in this database!”

I have no idea where this shit comes from. I sent a not so nice reply back and hopefully got removed from her bulk e-mail list for good. I will point out the same thing I did to her.

If you want your info removed from the web, you might have to spend more time than you planned. Here is a service similar to zabasearch (veromi).

http://www.usa-people-search.com/Results.aspx
http://www.integrascan.com/criminalrecords/background-check/?gcid=S17134x002&keyword=background+check
http://find.intelius.com/search-name.php?ReportType=1&&PHPSESSID=83b358dc0bd344579e097985a01f32a2

6

I’m disappointed: I’m not in there.

I’m not surprised, though. I’m not in the phone book, and I don’t think I ever have been. My only court records would be for traffic violations, and they’ve obviously not been indexed by Zaba. (They’ve probably been wiped years ago, anyway–if they are still around, they’re terribly out of date.)

I’m in the voter roles, which are public, but I think you have to pay for them in my county, so they won’t show up on these free searches.

7

Huh. I am on this site (http://www.usa-people-search.com/Results.aspx), which Shagnasty linked to. They even know who I’m related to. In fact, I just learned my stepfather’s middle name. But they have my age wrong. I wonder why.

They charge for most of their information, which is why they were willing to do the work of tracking me down. Their address info for me is out of date, but apparently not by much. Oddly, they don’t have my DC or Maryland addresses, but they have six addresses for me in my hometown, when they shouldn’t be able to come up with more than three, at a stretch.