Over the past few days, our phones have been ringing off the hook. As we’ve reported here and here, emails appear to be circulating virally across the law enforcement communities of the United States about Spokeo as a “new powerful public info database.” Links on the Spokeo site have prompted a number of officers to reach out to Reputation.com to see how they can remove their families’ personal information from this and other databases.

A couple of the officers have kindly forwarded at least one of the emails that seems to be circulating. Below is a very lightly edited version of what we received:

Subject: FW: Officer Awareness – New Powerful Public Info Database Online

New Powerful Public Info Database Online

Please take a moment to check that your info is NOT on this public website. If you are on this website– it may list your address, home phone number and even a google map pic of your home. See the email below for instructions on how to remove your name. The web site is www.spokeo.com.

Go to the site and enter your name. If your information is on there and you want it removed, go to the bottom of the home page and click on privacy. Follow the instructions to remove your information. It takes about 24 hours.

Some of the officers calling us have been understandably alarmed at how much very detailed information can be found on websites that aggregate data. We’ve commented many times both in this space and in other media that there has been a hockeysticking proliferation of both search technology and aggregation-and-correlation technology. This sea change has had some remarkable consequences. Today, researchers can interpolate everything from one’s sexual preference from anonymous video rental data and even social security numbers from other incidental data points.

A number of callers have asked us “how do I remove my name and information from Spokeo and other similar databases?” Years ago, we identified the growing problem of the rising availability of both publicly available information and aggregated-and-correlated information. The power of digital search, when put together with instantaneously available electronic databases, allows third parties to compile remarkably detailed profiles of people based on data points as typical as home addresses and names and as perhaps “unlikely” as email addresses, social media usernames, and even the names of other people in your social networks.

Back in 2006, when we were founded, Reputation.com set out as one of its core missions the objective of putting your privacy back in your hands. Our MyPrivacy product is the only service in the world that connects directly with some of the key information aggregating and correlating databases so that you can both FIND yourself and REMOVE yourself. The product gets more powerful all the time, as we connect to more and more databases across the Internet. MyPrivacy costs $9.95/month (or significantly less if you purchase a longer subscription upfront) and finds your data, removes your data, and then ensures that your data don’t get BACK into the databases, many of which constantly crawl and regularly repopulate with your information.

MyPrivacy removes you not only from Spokeo but also from many other databases across the Internet.

Reputation.com has been proud to offer our MyPrivacy service FREE TO LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS for a long time. Below is a link to a free registration process for law enforcement:

http://www.reputation.com/?code=officers2009

So how do you delete Spokeo results? What’s the fastest way to erase a Spokeo entry for you, along with many other similar results all across on the web? Join MyPrivacy today! Get your family’s privacy back in your family’s hands now.