You know how you can just enter anyone’s name into Google, ZabaSearch, WhitePages.com, or other people-oriented search engine and be pretty much assured that you’ll be able to get their name, address, phone number, list of last known relatives, and birthdate without even trying very hard? All that information is available for free without too much effort for practically anyone who bothers to go looking for it.
PrivacyRights.org has compiled a PRIVACY RIGHTS DIRECTORY OF OPT-OUT DIRECTIONS for those of you who would like to removed yourself from appearing in those online directories. It won’t remove you from the original sources that these directories pull from, and the directories don’t make any promises that you won’t re-appear in the future – but at least most of these search sites offer some way to limit the amount of information that’s available about you online to the casual web surfer.