PeekYou.com has applied for a patent for a way to, among other things, match people’s real names to pseudonyms they use on blogs, Twitter and online forums. A statement on its patent application describes the invention as “a method for aggregating over a network, personal information available from public sources.”
PeekYou’s people-watch Web site offers records of about 250 million people, primarily in the U.S. and Canada. PeekYou says it also is starting to work with listening services to help them learn more about the people whose conversations they are monitoring. It claims to provide only demographic information, not names or addresses.