I, Scanner Emily, have been trying to make myself less "available" online. I've made my social networking profiles private, and deleted the ones I no longer use (so long, Friendster, the summer of '04 was rockin!). I even changed my phone number because it was just a little too easy to find online. I thought I was doing well, feeling kind-of anonymous and mysterious (you know, for a blogger) and then I received this email from "Spokeo":   

As a courtesy, we are notifying you that Spokeo users have found the following accounts for you:

     Flickr ee**** on Flickr
     Amazon Emily ****** Farris's Wish List on Amazon
     Pandora emilyfarris on Pandora

If you would like to make these accounts private, please
change the privacy settings on the original network and
Spokeo will update its search results to reflect your changes.

To find your friends on Spokeo, signup now.
http://www.spokeo.com

First of all, I don't even know what Pandora is, and second of all, creepy? How did this program even get my email address? And what is it?

You want to know what it is? It's a website that makes it even easier for people to stalk you online. Not that we've not done our share of e-stalking, but we did it the old fashioned way with Google and MySpace. But this is your one stop stalker shop:

Do you know how many of your friends blog on MySpace or upload photos to Flickr? We don't think you do.

Spokeo searches popular networks for your friends' blogs, photos, videos and music. We guarantee you'll learn something new about your friends.
Do you know how many of your friends blog on MySpace or upload photos to Flickr? We don't think you do.

Spokeo searches popular networks for your friends' blogs, photos, videos and music. We guarantee you'll learn something new about your friends.

Gee, thanks, Spokeo. We'd write more but we have to go erase our electronic footprint.

[Spokeo]