Should Companies be Allowed to Harvest Our Data for their Own Gain?

In an age where a lot of our personal information is posted online, should there be boundaries? If we post our information, no matter the quantity, via services such as Facebook, should that give free reign to companies to use it as they please? Apparently, Gotham Dating Partners wholeheartedly believes the answer should be “yes”.

The company, which owns numerous dating-related websites, plans to scour the Web for user information via social networking sites, online surveys, e-mail registries, mailing lists and more, and then will use that information to automatically create dating profiles for all affected people. The company expects this will boost its membership count from 6.5 million to 340 million.

I have a couple of problems with this. First, just because I (as an example) provide personal information online, it doesn’t mean that it’s meant to be free to anyone to take as they feel the need. Sure, it’s possible, but that doesn’t mean it’s appreciated. Second, what’s the point of having dating profiles on sites that the affected people don’t even care or know about? It seems pointless.

It also seems pointless that legitimate users of these sites would be subject to millions of profiles that weren’t even created by the person they represent. This could result in a lot of unanswered enquires, and possibly even many rude responses – if the unknowing person does end up being contacted.

But, what else do you expect from a company that operates such classy sites as “Ugly People Date”, “Prison Hookups” and “Marry Me First”? Not much, I guess.

Jordan said the site would soon host some 340 million profiles after scraping information from social networking sites, e-mail registries, mailing lists, marketing surveys, government census records, real estate listings and business websites to create new dating profiles. Gotham Dating Partners hoped to position itself as a dating service as well as a “public information source” for individuals and corporations needing accurate information on US citizens, Jordan said.