I intend to study the website Spokeo.com that was recently brought up in a Newsweek article describing the new technology. Spokeo is a service that consolidates information from social networking sites like facebook, myspace, youtube, Flickr, etc. onto a single page, using email addresses as references to find information.

Spokeo was originally created for the purpose of having all of the social networking information put into a single place. But the website promises that "You'll learn something new about your friends". This implies that the website may be able to find those things that your friends don't want you to find.

In order to explore the website fully, I plan on setting up fake profiles on several of these websites using a false email address. I will test the privacy settings to see if spokeo has the ability to find content that should not be found. I will also test to see if the program will be able to associate emails (ie finding a profile with two email addresses, using both as reference emails to maximize the matches found. My analysis will cover the cocerns over privacy as well as connecting older generations who feel intimidated by the massive number of these sites.