back to article Background checking in the palm of the hand

The properly paranoid can now relax, BeenVerified is available for Android and iPhone platforms: so you can check out the history of anyone you meet instantly - if they're American, anyway. The service has been around as a website for a while, checking different publicly available sources of information and compiling a report …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    too much information

    in all the wrong hands.

  2. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    I have no issue with this service...

    ...as long as the "checked" person gets a notification as to who is checking up on them. Make it a two way street.

  3. CyberCod
    Meh

    lulz

    Makes me glad my last name is Smith.

    1. Mitch Kent
      Big Brother

      Makes me seriously consider...

      Changing my name to John Smith...

  4. Pseu Donyme

    It is remarkable

    ... how the EU / US concepts of "privacy" differ.

  5. Rob 5

    cui bono?

    Just another bunch of bastards fuelling paranoia and spreading fear, in order to make a buck at society's expense.

  6. Adam Foxton
    Joke

    Excellent! I no longer need to post anonymously!

    There are absolutely no AdamFoxtons who have committed any crime that their search thing can pick up.

    <daily mail witchhunter> However, there are a few "Sarah Bee"s listed- that must be why she left. Clearly she's a violent paedo-terror-witch, or she wouldn't show up on this service!</daily mail witchhunter>

  7. Jemma
    FAIL

    .. And the Department of justice...

    Poured their bowl into SQL and declared "we have become Paedogeddon, the destroyer of lives..!"

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good god

    The human race is fucked.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Well yes

      or at least a proportion of it. I thought that was the whole point of procreation.

  9. ElReg!comments!Pierre
    Facepalm

    The mother of all creepiness

    Apparently Gizmodo argument is that i's not creepy because you can get all the same info from extensive Google "sleuthing". Which I must assume is in turn not creepy because you can get all the same info by stalking your target for years, shirley?

    Also, Vimeo apparently is one of these braindead sites which blocks content when they encounter an unfamiliar user-agent. Muppets. They want me to install Safari. Better and better. I thought the "this site was coded for Internet Explorer, please install it and come back" behaviour died in the nineties, back to life? It seems like more and more websites just choke on user-agents they don't recognise. Even the reputable US National Library of Medicine tells me: "We are sorry, but NCBI web applications do not support your browser, and may not function properly." even though my user-agent string specifies that my browser is " like Firefox/3.5.17", which is "supported"*, apparently. You'd think that the NIH could hire semi-competent web devs, no?

    *what these clowns mean by a website "supporting" a browser is beyond me but that's another problem.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    "That hot babe in finance? Did 5 years in jail. Men's jail"

    Screw the privacy implications, got a phone number?

  11. Hud Dunlap
    FAIL

    it is getting slammed on the app store

    Most people are not having any luck. Considering where I live that the name Pedro Martinez takes up a whole page in the phone book I can't believe you could be sure you got the right one.

  12. T J
    FAIL

    Wont work everywhere

    In Australia, there are almost no legally accessible databases that this thing could use. It could be a handy tool for a licencsed Private Investigator but they have tools like this already.

    So it is only creepy if the society the software operates in is sufficiently creepy to allow it.

  13. Winkypop Silver badge
    Boffin

    Only if you actually exist in cyber-space that is

    "we're all just going to have to get used to everyone we meet knowing everything there is to know about us"

    My tin foil hat and faraday cage must be working.

    I don't exist on the Internet.

  14. Field Commander A9

    Useless

    There're only very few americans in this world.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    amnesia?

    "search anyone, even yourself. what comes up might just surprise you!"

    ARMED ROBBERY

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