Better than social networks like XING or Facebook for looking up a person: 123people not only includes ordinary web search results, photos and videos, but as well email addresses, post addresses and phone numbers (in Austria so far).
Even if I’m aware that there is a lot personal data spread over the internet, I feel very uncomfortable when it’s joined and displayed on one single page. The biggest privacy threat, in the private and public sector, is matching personal data out of several, originally seperated, data bases. Luckily public administration suffers from bureaucracy which adds some friction between public agencies. Actually it adds more friction than our legislation does at the moment. On the private side, the friction is lesser. Especially on the internet it seems easy to trace persons, as services like 123people demonstrate.
However, it just proves the “feeling” I’m having that it’s time to withdraw some personal information from the internet. Sooner or later it’ll be abused.
Btw, maybe 123people should change their tagline to something like
123people, the stalker’s tool of choice.