Friday, November 07, 2008

Out of my league bleg

I have a client who is convinced that USAPeopleSearch is out to get him. If one enters his name on Google then his name pops up on the right in one of those ad thinks that says "Find Scooter."
He has an unlisted number but if you pay the money, they give you his name, number and several recent addresses.

I called last week and could only get to "customer service" and the person on the other end said she couldn’t give me the names of any of the company officers and that I should send a letter addressed to their president. They also wouldn't say how they obtained the unlisted number.

I sent the "cease and desist" letter which the post office reports was received yesterday. Any thoughts as to whether they are doing anything wrong? My client believes it is discrimination of some sort because when other names in similar occupations are entered, those names don't come up.

3 comments:

Stephanie said...

Hmm. Sounds more like a violation of privacy sort of thing ( (if not also a violation of a statute protecting identify/info) than a discrimination sort of thing. But neither is my bag.

Stephanie said...

USAPeopleSurvey says it gets all its info from public databases: People Database
The records that you see when you run searches on USA People Search are all public records. If you are surprised to see yourself in our database, this is most likely due to having property records, marriage records, or some other type of public record that was created at some time in your life. We don't create any of the records in our database, we simply aggregate public records from thousands of sources. We are basically like Google, but instead of searching for web sites you are searching for people.

Scooter said...

Thanks. My client may be a bona fide paranoid. The phone number thing does bug me, though. I just have no clue how to even approach helping her if my blustery letter doesn't work. Of course, he'll not want to spend any money...it being so appararent that what they are doing is wrong.