Friday 10 August 2007

Spock or Spooky

This has nothing to do with my research, but any way it was a little bit amusing and worrisome to do some research about this topic. Few weeks ago I knew about Spock, a site for searching people. I was eager to jump in and to test what it was about (I did something similar for LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, etc. sometime ago) but then I thought. Even that someone offered me an invitation I stopped and I wonder. Do I really want all my personal data to be in just one place?

I mean, my data is there around my blogs, my website, my profile in I do not how many places. You just need to do some Google research to find my contacts details and some information about me. So, is there any difference between “google” me or search about me in Spock? Well, there is. I am not in Spock. Nice, isn’t it?

Well, but someday for sure I will, so, there will be any difference then? I think yes, while searching about people with Yahoo, Google or any other search engine you have to go around several pages to get all the data, while in Spock, you get it with just one or two clicks (depending how common is the name you are looking for). The implications are so great (I am been sarcastic if you haven’t noticed it), you can have all the need to make some online frauds, crack passwords, stole identities, etc. The possibilities are unlimited. I am being paranoiac, yeah, may be. In the other side, may be hackers will not use it any way, today is a little bit slow and online scammers rely in better applications than Spock to profile people (just read this). So, in the end I think that it will be very helpful to track some of your old friends, colleagues and classmates. And why not, to amuse you a little bit finding curious details of people that share the same name than your friends or best, to know details that you did not know about your friends. Just to mention I learn Zodiac Signs, weird hobbies, sexual interests, trips, past relations, etc. Every bit of information that is there but they did not share with you, you just need to dig a little to find it.
Until today, if you are trying to find some friends to get in touch, better use other methods such as Google. The database of Spock is still very small. Finally, the concept is not new. There are some other sites that do the same. The thing with Spock is that the marketing played and important role to bring it to the spot light.

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