Business

Remove Spoke.com From the Internet

By Khalid ⋅ May 20, 2007 ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

I stumbled on this website the other day, Spoke.com, while checking the web logs. Spoke.com seems to have lifted my profile and contact information from various networking and websites and listed it on their website as “validated” profile and contact information. I have a couple of problems with this.

First, I have never signed up with this website, nor submitted my information to them; thereby making this a violation of my privacy to list information about me on their website without my approval. Additionally, since the information that they have listed in both outdated and incorrect, I am interested in knowing what the purpose of the site is.

Also, I did a search on the internet for Spoke.com and found that Symantec had issued a Security Warning against this organization for gleaning information from Outlook address books including private phone numbers and personal email addresses and listing them on their site for spam mailer and lazy sales/marketing departments to use.

I found another blog, Phil Yanov, where someone had posted an email from a a Spoke representative that said:

“Spoke combines information from multiple sources, including published data, information available on the Web, and information validated by members. In most cases, information about a person, such as their name, title and company, has come from multiple sources and is not protected by copyright or trade secret laws. Spoke does not publish direct contact information such as a person’s direct e-mail address or direct-dial phone number.

When requested, Spoke will remove information about a person if it is proven to have been added in violation of the law, a non-disclosure agreement, or an employment agreement. Since Spoke regularly combines information from multiple sources, including the Web, Spoke cannot guarantee that information removed will not be recreated by another independent source.”

Who gives you the right to take our information that we have listed on our corporate websites and on membership only networking groups and use it for your personal gain?

Organizations like this need to be bounced off the Internet as they have no place in the business world.

Tags: emagine, khalid muhammad, privacy, security warning, spoke, symantec, warning