"Big Brother" steps into social networking sphere

28th February 2008

A new social networking aggregator has been described as "the Big Brother of social networking" by one blog.

Writing on Pandia Search Engine News, Phil Bradley observes that new resource Spokeo gathers information on social networking contacts from a number of sites.

Users give the site their email address and password and within minutes are fed updates from their contacts across a number of sites - for example, MySpace, Last.fm or Ma.gnolia.

The site's privacy page asserts that it only finds information publicly available on other sites.

However, Mr Bradley asserts that the site "must be a gold mine for private investigators, stalkers and other unsavoury people".

While the site's name is a reference to its "hub-and-spokes" nature, the blogger suggests that "a better name would be Spookey".

Tony Neate, managing director of official web security initiative Get Safe Online, has this month warned users to be wary of information they make public on social networking websites.