Online Service Reveals La Mesans’ Names, Phone Numbers Via Address

A new website marketed to La Mesans lets people nationwide look up home addresses and learn the occupants’ names and phone numbers.

Produced by WhitePages.com, the free service is being promoted as a way to connect with neighbors for organizing block parties. The group behind the National Night Out crime-fighting event Aug. 2 has linked to the service at neighbors.whitepages.com.

Kiana Brown, a WhitePages.com representative, wrote Friday: “I noticed that La Mesa participated in National Night Out last year, and plans on partaking again this year, so I just wanted to let your readers know that they can use our free tool to organize this event, as well as any other future block party.”

But the service raises privacy issues as well, including concerns over how criminals might use the online tool.

Kim Dumas, who runs the local Neighborhood Watch website, says: “I’ve sampled this new resource provided by whitepages.com and my initial thoughts and opinions are not good. I think most of us agree that it is too easy for people to get a hold of our personal information these days.  I have personally removed my listing because I don’t feel the need to have this information so easily accessible by anyone who wants it.”

Dumas, whose La Mesa home was burglarized in 2007, worries about the site’s crime potential.

“The tricks and ploys are endless, and this new service makes it extremely easy for ANYONE with a computer to gain personal information about you,” she wrote in a letter to the editor.

Representatives of the company defend the service as using public infomation that's long been available.

“With our launch, WhitePages Neighbors is the first neighborhood satellite aerial map of U.S. household contact information, including first and last name, mailing address, associated household members, and phone number to help neighbors more effectively get in touch,” said Liz Powell, a spokeswoman for WhitePages.com.

In a comment posted Friday night, WhitePages.com CEO Alex Algard wrote, “We are only providing the same public information that has been available for many years already [through] many other sources into a new neighborhood oriented view.”

Powell says that if you have cable connection, fill out a credit application or own a home, “your contact information becomes public and we feel that it is important that people know that their information is out there and that they have options to take control over their data.”

She noted the opt-out tool on Neighbors, and said: “We put people in complete control over their data and strongly encourage people to come to WhitePages to claim and edit their listing.”

Algard, who started WhitePages.com as a hobby at Stanford University with a $1,100 investment, echoed that stance.

“For the people who do not want to participate,” he said, “we are committed to making it simple for anybody to opt out or otherwise control exactly how their individual info is presented.”

More than 25,000 invitations to block parties have already gone out, using the service, Algard said.

Said Powell via email Friday: “We are really excited about this new offering and have had some great feedback from users so far (especially those utilizing it to organize National Night Out).”

But Dumas said: “I’m a bit surprised that National Night Out is tooting the horn of this new resource.  Maybe it’s fine in a perfect little town that has no problems and everyone is friendly and everyone is looking out for each other. Unfortunately, that’s not reality.”

The Neighbors service is a new spin on the old-fashioned reverse phone directory, where people could look up an address in a phone book and find the associated name and phone number.

Companies such as Haines produce print and online reverse directories costing hundreds of dollars, or thousands if a multi-user license is involved.

Powell explained how WhitePages.com, founded by Algard in 1997, does the same thing for free.

“We are a top-50 most-trafficked website, with contact information for more than 200 [million] U.S. residents … and 20 [million] business. We also have popular mobile apps on Android, iPhone, Blackberry, webOS and Windows,” she said.

“All of our online services are free. For the most part, our revenue comes from advertising on our site, with some premium services (Caller ID) offered through our mobile applications.”

Powell says WhitePages Neighbors can help residents protect themselves by providing “everyone with an opportunity to learn their neighbors’ names and how to reach them—whether it is just to meet them for the first time or in case of an emergency.”

For people who don’t want their neighbors contacting them, she said, “WhitePages offers the only online directory where people can publish, change, make private or remove their contact information entirely.”

No governmental agency OK’d her company’s service, she said.

“We don’t need approval from a government authority as all of the information that we have on our site comes from publicly available sources,” she said.

One reviewer in Seattle says the service lacks accuracy, and Powell responded: “We work hard to keep our information up to date and, thankfully, our users help us by updating their own listings. However, if someone moves or a buys a new home, there may be a short lag time before our records are updated.”

Where does WhitePages.com get its information?

“All of the information that we have on our site is pulled from publicly available sources that includes published phone directories and information published on the Internet,” Powell said.

“In addition, a number of listings come from users adding their own listings to WhitePages (about 3 million of our listings have been created this way).”

Dumas concedes the utility of the site.

“When I want to find out something about someone, this will probably be my first stop,” Dumas said. “I’ll see where they live, get their phone number and then maybe I’ll look them up on Zillow to see how much their house is worth. I will then zoom in on that house on Google Maps and see if I can get a good idea of how this person lives. 

“Now imagine that I’m a criminal and want to break into that house.   In this world, there is good and there is evil. The Internet does not discriminate between the two.”