Yikes. This definitely is TMI in my opinion. Talk about stalkers dream come true!  Wow. While this may seem like a good idea it has the potential to be abused. At fist most people will use it on themselves but after a while it will be let me check my wife or my ex or my cousin or new twitter follower or my co-worker or my pastor. The possibilities are endless. Like you asked at the end Just because we can do something with technology, should we?  I wonder if this post and the subsequent twittering has overloaded them: I installed the app no prob but when searching it just hangs….  Whoa! That is really TMI for sure! Sure am glad I have a squeaky clean record, no tickets, etc.  The implications of this highly personal info being shared on a social could be really damaging to folks… yikes!  Excellent post. I came across the app yesterday and am very alarmed at its implications and potential usage. I started a Facebook group to ban the application here: http://tinyurl.com/cj3tps and wrote a bit more detailed post with my concerns over the application here: http://tinyurl.com/djgkvh My main concern is not the availability of the info (which is available elsewhere) but the ease and encouragement to share the info.  I appreciate that Mashable seems to take the app seriously, and has put some thought to its potential for malicious usage. Few others have really grasped the potential of this app.  I tried to use TrueScoop and all I got was this crappy searching graphic  … they are clearly not equipped for a traffic surge!  this is wrong, plain and simple.  Folks, this information is already out there, truescoop simply make access easier. I don’t see the problem. What is wrong with full disclosure? Just tell you date early on and everything is peachy. And yes, sex offender have to use their real name when using MySpace and Facebook, probably a lot less offenses would happen if everyone was wise enough to check on truescoop before. It might event prevent crime because these days everyone will know… i think it’s a cool tool. Why only people with deep pockets should be able to background check?  Folks, this information is already out there, truescoop simply make access easier. I don’t see the problem. What is wrong with full disclosure? Just tell your date early on and everything is peachy. And yes, sex offender have to use their real name when using MySpace and Facebook, probably a lot less offenses would happen if everyone was wise enough to check on truescoop before. It might event prevent crime because these days everyone will know… i think it’s a cool tool. Why only people with deep pockets should be able to background check?  Xenia- my personal concern is not with the availability of the information, but with the integration of such information into a social network such as Facebook, and making the information easily share-able. As pointed out in AllFacebook News yesterday, it is easy to confuse identities as most names will appear multiple times, and there is also a concern with regards to the accuracy or relevance of public records found online. The app is completely unnecessary since as you state, the information is available elsewhere online (also for free) but outside of the social networking sphere. There is no safeguard to prevent misuse, abuse, etc, and the integration into a shared public network raises cause for concern of people potentially exploiting the application, particularly in light of recent Facebook scams.  The scary thing is anyone with an internet connection can access deeply personal info about anyone at anytime, with no money or trail really. It’s none of someone’s business that I may be casually dating about my personal history (assuming there’s nothing really bad in there, like murder, multiple rapes, etc).  Why is it okay to go after people like Obama about their true birthplace or senators about their tax history - and it’s not okay for the average joe?  This is all public info, all stuff you can find yourself, and the only people who are really woried are people with something to hide. It’s like a sex offender database, or any other public information.  Personally I find this troubling, and I smell sock puppets big time in this comment thread.  Damn right I have something to hide - it’s called “my own f*cking business”. I believe a basic tenet of our American value system suggests that nosy snoops should stay out of it and mind your own.  Those who are so eager to forsake privacy, why not post your tax records, your monthly pay stub, full medical records, your full sexual history, your kids’ names/phone numbers/photos, your measurements, a naked photo of yourself and your spouse, ad infinitum? Yeah ridiculous concept, you say? Oh so you DO have some personal boundaries of privacy. And you DO have something to hide. Ignore that tingling sensation in your brain, it’s just cognitive dissonance. Quick, put on some Hannity to make it go away.  Many of us - I would argue most people under 40 who use the Internet - are not as willing to give up our privacy for the sake of “safety” and “reducing crime”. If it’s “public information, this just makes it easier”… well then maybe our privacy laws should evolve as well.  waitwait don’t tell me… my stance on this issue means I’m an ex-felon, right? Let me guess… kiddie fiddler?  TrueScoop also has the feature where you can identify one of the records are yourself. the “this is me” button. once you do that, there should be little confusion that you are someone else.  People opt to be public figures — part of their salary pays for that — and covers their safety. Your average Joe doesn’t have bodyguards, PR firms and other things to cover them. Sometimes it’s not about hiding something — but in some peoples case some records that come up for things that were dismissed, or may have happened years ago — that’s fair for everyone to snoop in? So no one gets a second chance? Your comparing apples and oranges here with us being as open as the President and being like sex offenders — this is just a huge violation of privacy.  At firs look this public records look-up app makes me cringe and I thought— too far!! But, if you think about it…it IS public data…and after all, for those of us awaiting the dawn of the data (semantic) web….this is just little eency beency baby steps to making said public data all the more accessible and findable, right?  One of my friends actually found a record on herself that was supposed to have been expunged years ago. She certainly wasn’t happy it was up there, but she now plans on looking into it to make sure it IS “erased.” Maybe this app could have some info on what to do if you find an incorrect record about yourself.  [...] at Mashable, Adam Ostrow wrote up a new Facebook application today called TrueScoop. On the surface it seems [...]  Susan, did your friend check the website of the court where it should have been expunged to see if they did so? Good luck to your friend.  Thanks for your opinion that you “think it’s a cool tool”! Good to know.  On another note: if you are such a strong advocate of full disclosure and open information, why didn’t you disclose that you are Xenia von Wedel, the PR/media contact for this product, that you work for Tarpin Communications, and that your can be reached on 310-821-6100 x116? Is it not sock puppetry because your post contained your first name?  If the future of the web is that the button right next to “Add Alisa as a friend” says “read thorough every mistake, misdemeanor, and online action that Alisa has ever committed in her life” then count me the hell out of that Scarlet Letter 2.0 fantasy. My personal belief is that blindly cheerleading all technological development is disingenuous. Ethics is not law, and law is not ethics.  Innovation has certainly defined American competitiveness. So I naturally feel lame getting all Grandpa Joe Up In Montana Saying Get Off My Porch And Leave Me Alone about this. Half of me applauds the developer for testing the boundaries… so long as it soon leads to a proper discussion about privacy that would ultimately grant some privacy. Perhaps some good will come of it, much like when hackers break into something secure to show that it’s not. But at the same time… this is exactly the sort of thing that does well when marketed using fear.  Finally a few questions @Karel Baloun, developer of this application:  Regardless of what I imagine is 100% airtight legality of your efforts, your application will encourage a massive rise in the dispersion of information that many people (such as your own friends and family) consider personal and do not want others to see. Before it was relatively more difficult/expensive to get this information. As a result, many people probably consider the information to be personal and private, as it is “protected” by a level of inaccessibility that ensures it remains fairly well hidden from friends, family, employers, etc. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that I have no problem with a theoretical application that identifies felonies, but I have a problem with your application, which lists misdemeanors. Thsi would including public indecency charges, getting written up for smoking a joint, public nusiance charges, getting arrested at a rally, and a number of other things that some ex-fratboys might consider to be “dumb stuff I did in college that is fully behind me now that I’m in my 40s and have a family” but that will nonetheless be judged by relatively more prudish people as “OMG I can’t do a business deal with this guy’s company now.”  1) Why do you believe this application is a net good for society? 2) Do you believe engineers are free of the responsibility for any negative impact their innovations may have on society, and that the free market or government regulation should sort out any resulting issues? 3) Do you believe that current privacy laws are perfect, or does your own notion of what should remain private and what should be public differ from the laws currently on the books? 4) I’d guess that you have at least one friends or family member who have done embarrassing things that they regret and have long since forgotten, and this significantly reduces the barrier for anyone to find out about it. Do you feel good about this, or neutral? 5) Certainly many people - regardless of whether we’ve got “anything to hide” - do not like this service because it significantly reduces the barriers to accessing such information. Do you care? 6) Aside from making money, do you have any loftier intentions in releasing this application? 7) Why does Arbor Ventures of Casper, WY - the investors behind this project - lack any sort of online footprint? What do they have to hide, to use a previous commenter’s phrase? Your application was slammed today with the big PR push so I couldn’t get through to access the record on you. I did find your personal email address by googling you, and I got your wife’s name on another free service. Are you fully comfortable with other people reducing the barriers to accessing such publicly-available data about yourself, your colleagues, and your family? If not, how do you justify doing so to me and to everyone I know? 10) Will you offer us the option to block access to our information on your application? If so, will this be free or will be be expected to pay for that?  Firstly, your resourcefulness in outing Xenia is applauded. Secondly, if I may again play devil’s advocate here…everyone is getting very upset over data that is ALREADY PUBLICLY AVAILABLE. How is it a violation of privacy if I can already access this data? I’m not saying I am totally comfortable with it, but this data is not “private.” Its public data– that’s how the app can even access it in the first place. So I am trying to get at the crux of the uproar– is it because this data is public, or that barrier to access has simply been reduced?  Now, AP, re: “the future of the Web.” If you are a champion of Semantic Web and champion the idea of linked data and the creation of a universal “data bus” analogous to the web itself, than this is precisely the kind of data accessibility we are championing. It is not necessarily that when you “add Alisa as a friend” that you will have access to all said public data about me– but certainly public data made available in the “data bus” could potentially be a part of one’s uiversal identity (however, it is assumed that in this phase, one’s identity will be controlled by the end user, and not by any one application of service, hence the whole reasoning behind decentralized identity data).  I’m very much concerned that my work is a net good for society. I haven’t always been right about my choices, but I have a deep ethical philosophy that I take very seriously. I think this app is good because it makes public information more free.  Whether too much information is public, for example records of home ownership and everything else the government keeps, that’s another question. We should be able to lock that down better. I’d support laws that give citizens full control over that public information, including all of the credit/financial and medical information that exists about us over which we have incomplete control. But TrueScoop isn’t making this information public, it is just letting everyone know it is public, and have equal and fair access to it.  Whether smoking a joint should be illegal is complicated question, personally I’m for full legalization (and possibly regulation) of marijuna. I’d like to see victimless crimes in general not prosecuted. That doesn’t mean that people need to hide from me whether they smoke anything, but they do need to take full responsibility for their choices. I think society would be better if we all chose not to do things we’d like to hide. This app is one small step to a world where it is harder to hide things we do wrong. That doesn’t mean people with criminal records are doomed; I believe in forgiveness.  People have personal information about me, and about my family, because I wasn’t careful with it at some point. My bad. We all need to learn to more careful with personal information in a computerized society, as facebook is making great efforts to teach us. There are great books about protecting privacy, such as How to Be Invisible by J.J. Luna, which we should all understand - but it takes great disciple and effort. I admire such effort, and wish you the best with it.  TrueScoop doesn’t make anything new public, it just educates all of us about what is public. Both for ourselves and for our friends and family.  If so want to see more of my true colors, check out another app I launched over a year ago called I Am Safe. http://apps.facebook.com/iamsafe/home . That one wasn’t as sexy as this, so never got widespread attention, but it is clearly for the social good.  @ Agressive Pacifist Hey Sherlock, I usually do not publicize my personal opinion under my full name, but if you are interested in a more professional wording publicized under Xenia von Wedel than please see: http://web2.sys-con.com/node/837774  Anyways, unless you have a public record, this app is not much more revealing than a phonebook and a series of searches you can do on elsewhere on the internet. If you do have a record, then consider it the pillory of digital lifestyle. However, for anyone who is online dating this is a valid tool before going on a date… now that people are befriending other people on Facebook, this seems to be the logical place to find this sort of information in the right place. IMHO, Cheers Xenia  Has anyone else found that the Terms of Service is not viewable for this applications?  That kind of gives me pause given that it is all about distributing personal information - what if they intend to use your facebook info to help supplement their database? With no ToS how could you know?  Yes… since they have been live I have not been able to access the TOS.  …and as far as the person who had a record that was supposed to be expunged but was retrieved by the searh–that is exactly what I am concerned about! You paid your debt to society, and the crime was considered petty enough that it was due to be expunged after X number of years, but there it is, back there to haunt you.. Now, lets make that information EASILY shared in a viral environment and suddenly an indiscretion that should not even be public info anymore is colouring people’s perceptions of you, and unfairly at that.  @Jonathan Seely I understand your point, but it’s the courts error that the record still shows up. My friend would likely have never even found out about the mistake until an employer ran a background check on her. In this sense, TrueScoop potentially saved her a future job, since she is aware of the mistake and can take steps to correct it. But like I said, I do understand the concern of making that information so easily accessible to anyone.  Also, I just checked the TOS and can view it fine.  I feel this application significantly reduces the barrier to obtaining information that many people consider to be personal, regretful, or private. I’m aware that the information is “ALREADY PUBLICLY AVAILABLE” and admit that it’s technically inaccurate to say that such information is private. However this application significantly reduces barriers to accessing this information in a way that I believe to be a significant, material erosion of privacy, which I greatly resent. When I share information on Facebook, I am reducing my privacy at my own discretion. TrueScoop materially erodes our privacy, but without our consent.  Allow me to use a long, rambling metaphor to illustrate my points.  To me it feels like Karel has positioned a TrueScoop binoculars stand, aimed right at my bedroom window, and posted a big sign inviting anyone coming in and out of my apartment to “Use TrueScoop to check out what Aggressive Pacifist does in his bedroom that he wouldn’t ever tell you about. This would be good information for you to know if you are interested in being his friend. Also, I’ve got 24/7/365 VHS tapes of everything he’s been doing in there since he turned 18, and I’ve highlighted the nasty bits in case you’re interested. Here’s a list. By the way it’s free.”  In this case, the information everyone can access is public, and Karel is just making it easier. Your devil’s advocacy argues “Your window IS ALREADY PUBLICLY OPEN ANYWAY, there’s no law against what he’s doing, anyone could walk by with their own binoculars and gaze in themselves”. And I’m saying, yes I know, but the fact that no one really thinks to carry around binoculars to snoop at what I might be doing is itself a barrier - one that significantly contributes to the level of privacy that I enjoy. Karel pointing TrueScoop at my window and conducting PR to my friends to get everyone to check me out is an entirely legal but unwelcome erosion of all of the barriers - legal, practical, or whatever - that constitute the totality of my personal privacy.  To extend the metaphor excruciatingly further: if I had the ability to put up a big drape to shield my bedroom, then this wouldn’t really be an issue. I’d still be annoyed at the existence of TrueScoop, and annoyed at all the TrueScoop stands Karel set up for the bedroom windows of all of us Americans. At least there would be comfortable barriers. But my landlord (the government) didn’t put up a drape (adequate privacy of personal information), and I feel that Karel - although admiringly calling attention to this fact - is effectively exploiting this unfortunate situation.  So to answer your questions Alisa, I admit but resent the legality and the “but he’s just making it easier”-ness of Karel’s binocular stand. I actually do appreciate that it called attention to my lack of a drape, and now I want new legislation that forces my landlord to install that drape… or to provide a drape rod so I can hang up my own. Since my landlord’s got bigger things to worry about right now besides my drape, clearly nothing’s going to happen very quickly on that side, so in the meantime, all I can do is complain about the binocular stand, and wish that Karel would close his national chain of TrueScoop stands and focus on something else.  For me, my ability to go around the country peering through binoculars aimed at my friends’/family members’/colleagues’/neighbors’ bedroom windows might be useful or interesting in certain situations. But I prefer a certain level of privacy, and prefer to let others have theirs. While other TrueScoop stands might provide me with a small but material benefit, this utility is offset by the massive, negative impact I feel from the TrueScoop aimed at my own window. As I strongly believe that most Americans would feel the same way, I believe that the net effect of this application is negative.  regarding the semantic web - yes I do champion linked data. But I believe there should be some boundaries. The government should protect our privacy to a certain level and allow no one but each individual person the right to maintain or erode it. An example, apropos of the previous topic: I believe that society is provided with a net benefit when a list of offenders of the worst sexual crimes is publicly available. I do not believe, however, that society is better off when a list of every misdemeanor we’ve all ever committed or every debt we currently owe is available. If someone streaked in public 20 years ago, and anyone can click instantly to see that he’s got an indecent exposure charge on his record, that is going to materially affect his life and all of our lives in a negative way until he dies. Actually beyond that, I suppose: when we click through the profiles for his great-grandchildren, we’ll just be a few clicks away from the misdemeanors that grandpappy committed 120 years ago.  Read this http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081011133024AAXiTP4 and ask yourself: is society better off because this information is readily available? Obviously, I believe not. I think TrueScoop incrementally brings us closer to an unforgiving society, where there is no such thing as a past indiscretion.  Perhaps eventually the fourth amendment can provide a legal case for the establishment of proper online privacy laws.  I appreciate your long and thoughtful response. I can understand, again, the cringe-factor of all this data becoming more visible. But to your point..this is not about the app itself, the issue is really around what is and is not public data. If anything, this app brings to light just how public our lives really are. The heart of the issue again is the data itself. Illuminating that data is not in of itself unethicial. That said, I agree with you re: semantic web that personal data should be controlled by individuals.  What I appreciate about all this is the discussion that it has generated…up until now, who has really ever considered the (positive or negative) power of their personal, public record? Its not that this is an “online privacy” issue as you mention, its a privacy issue in general if you are not comfortable with the kind of data that is freely available in the public domain. This little app has sparked discussion about privacy issues around information that is not private — if nothing else, this discussion itself is valuable. Its a wake up call.  So next biggest debate of the 21st century…what to do with all the data?  @ Jonathan Seely : the TOS is on the upper right hand corner.  @ agressive pacifist: Dude, what part of the words “public record” do you not understand???? Once you screwed up and you have a record it is like having a scar in your face that you will have to explain over and over again. That’s why mom said don’t get in trouble…  The TOS link on the “Allow” screen is still broken. I would say that if you’re trying this app and you find that the TOS is broken for you as well, you should report the app to Facebook.  This is the TOS link I’m referring to: http://screencast.com/t/olZ0EMJsXF  There may indeed be a TOS _inside_ the app but that’s irrelevant - at that point you as a user have already agreed to the TOS and transferred your personal data to them.  This is specifically _why_ FB requires developers to provide a link to ToS on the allow application screen. You have to be able to read the TOS _before_ allowing access to your account. Otherwise it’s useless.
If you already think social networks give you a bit more information than you want about some people, TrueScoop’s new Facebook application might make you