The Official PeopleSmart Blog

Social Search Privacy: What You Need to Know

Yesterday, we shared how to control your privacy settings with Facebook's Timeline. Today, we have more privacy tips for social networking--but now it's Google that's delivering an interesting new feature that brings with it a few privacy concerns.

Earlier this week, Google rolled out Social Search, which aims to provide more personally relevant search results. In addition to the standard search results, Social Search includes search results from your online connections, Google+ profiles, and other social sites. Read more...

How to Manage the Latest Facebook Privacy Faux Pas

Facebook may face the Federal Trade Commission over yet another privacy concern. This time, it's about Timeline. Timeline is the name for Facebook's new design that presents a user's shared information in a chronological, scrollable format that is arguably more aesthetically pleasing and definitely more exposed.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center is asking the FTC to examine how Timeline alters a user's privacy settings and Facebook handles privacy through obscurity. Privacy through obscurity refers to the idea that data is more secure if it is more difficult to access. Read more...

Prioritizing User Experience With a New VP

This morning PeopleSmart's parent company Inflection announced the addition of Peter Merholz as Vice President of User Experience. Our user experience team is dedicated to making our sites intuitive and enjoyable for our customers to use. Peter, with his expertise in all things user experience, will be vital to identifying and implementing further enhancements.

User experience is a high priority for PeopleSmart. In recent months, we've updated the site's design and functionality in a number of small ways that make it even easier to find the information you seek. Read more...

Inflection Adds Peter Merholz as Vice President, User Experience

Inflection, parent company to PeopleSmart and other leading websites, is excited to announce that Peter Merholz will join the team as Vice President of User Experience. Co-founder of Adaptive Path, a premier user experience consulting firm, Peter brings over 15 years of experience in web design and interactive media. He joins a number of outstanding recent additions to the Inflection leadership team.

As VP of User Experience, Peter will lead the User Experience team at Inflection. "While my primary responsibility is to lead a world-class user experience team," Peter said, "I see my real job as encouraging a company-wide mindset around holistic customer experience Read more...

New Feature: State Courts Pages

We've added new information to PeopleSmart, and we wanted to share it with you. Recently, we updated the information for each State's Court Agency page in our public records database. This is where you can go to find information about retrieving public records from a state's court office.

One of the challenges of working with public records is that many are not yet digitized. So, if you need a copy of your birth certificate, or want to verify certain court records, you might need to order a physical copy. Our Court Agency pages will be an important tool for researchers, especially those dealing with records in multiple states.

Read more...

Can’t Find A Phone Number? Study Finds Millions Recycled Each Year

Have you ever called someone, only to find that the person on the other end of the line wasn't who you were expecting? If it wasn't misdialed number, chances are, you reached one of the millions of telephone users with a recycled phone number.

According to a recent report by the Federal Communications Commission, every year, nearly 37 million phone numbers are recycled. This means that a new subscriber is given a phone number that previously belonged to someone else. The standard waiting time for reassigning a number is one year for businesses and 90 days for personal numbers, but with an increasing amount of mobile phone users, the window is becoming shorter. Read more...

Tired of Tapping? Get Numbers+ for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch

Inflection, an innovative and industry-leading people search startup, has today announced the release of Numbers+ for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Built to streamline and simplify exchanging contact information with others, Numbers+ utilizes a secure database of contact records to circumvent the typically tedious process of adding new contacts. Users simply write in their new contact's name or number and the app does the rest, retrieving full contact profiles in seconds! No more typing in names, numbers, and extra information. Numbers+ is currently available as a free download on the Apple App Store in the Social Networking and Utilities categories. Read more...

A Holiday Classic You Don't Want to See: How The Grinch Stole...Your Identity?

It's that time of year again--time for year round identity thieves to pick up their holiday bonuses in the form of victims who are too busy or too giving to guard themselves against identity theft. Holiday scams can be enough to turn even the jolliest shopper into a scrooge, but you can protect yourself, and your holiday spirit. Brush up on the common schemes identity thieves use during the holidays, and learn what you can do to avoid becoming a victim. Read more...

Jim Dempsey Talks Tech and Privacy

Recently, Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) stopped by our office to give a presentation over lunch about current privacy issues, privacy legislation, and the importance of "privacy by design." Jim is an authority in the space, having been with CDT since 1997, and is currently serving as the Vice President for Public Policy. He also shared some of the projects the CDT is working on and answered questions from our team. PeopleSmart takes privacy seriously, always seeking to stay up-to-date on the latest issues, and incorporating innovate privacy controls into our website.

Read more...

Privacy Spotlight: People Smart Does Not Reveal Social Security Numbers

In this post we'd like to feature another way that PeopleSmart.com thinks thoughtfully about privacy issues.

Social Security Numbers, which we guard carefully while we're alive, become public record after death. The United States government compiles a Social Security Death Index (SSDI) based on the deaths reported to the Social Security Administration. The SSDI contains Social Security Numbers for the deceased individuals in the file, which today includes about 95% of deaths in the U.S.

The SSDI is an important source for public record data for genealogists and people searching for old classmates, distant relatives, and the like. Read more...