I find Rapleaf to be quite insidious. It all began with an email from Vivek [who is Vivek?] asking me ….
“How the heck does Rapleaf know if someone is a 28 year old male teacher
from Nebraska? Or maybe a 42 year old “soccer mom” from Orlando, Fl.
Whatever one’s demographics are, we’re able to find it from publicly
available information on the web.”
Thats spammy enough to disregard, but here is the punchline:
You can now scroll over the info on your profile stats and we’ll
highlight where we pull this info from. We call this the “hover and
discover” feature – check it out:http://www.rapleaf.com/pub/%5Bmy-name deleted]
And be sure to go to the “source” to correct any inaccurate info you find.
This smacks of blackmail to me. A while back I received an email from Rapleaf noting that someone had searched for my address. In that case I knew it was me searching myself, but why am I left feeling that they are snooping on me, despite the fact I think [?] they are trying to protect me.
Rapleaf: Reputation Lookup and Email Search
Look someone up by their email address to view their reputation related information, profile stats, and social networks.
The Rapleaf site highlights this motto:
“By creating a Rapleaf reputation, you have taken a step towards a society where it is more profitable to be ethical.”
There are benefits to someone who wants to take on the role of protecting me, and my reputation, but thats not how Rapleaf makes me feel. That motto, does NOT align with the tone of the email I received which I perceive as threatening.
I have watched them for a while, and this article worried me because of the lack of transparency with an associated company that is in the business of selling customer data.
zdnet
All of this information could come in handy for Rapleaf’s third
business, TrustFuse, which sells data (but not e-mail addresses) to
marketers so they can better target customers, according to TrustFuse’s
Web site. As of Friday afternoon, the sites of Rapleaf and Upscoop had
no visible link to TrustFuse, but TrustFuse’s privacy policy mentions
that the two companies are wholly owned subsidiaries of TrustFuse.
Even though Scoble, whom I respect, repealed his concerns about Rapleaf post, I remain skeptical, and am not pulling anything until I am convinced otherwise.
Bankwatch 
It’s they way in which they scrape information from people’s gmail address books via their Upscoop service that particularly repels me; particularly the broken promises about not emailing or contacting any email address obtained from address books, and not handing over email addresses to partners, clients, third-party marketers, or other third parties.
@Nicholas …. thanks for stopping by and making the comment. Actually I spoke with some folks today, younger folks, just to test my concerns, and yes i got validation. It seems to me there is a space to protect peoples information and identity, but threats and misuse of information are verboten.