Macenstein

Looks like the iPhone might be the budding paparazzo’s new best friend.

Last month I reviewed Background Check App for the iPhone, the app that lets you perform on-the-spot background checks on virtually anyone, anywhere. It being right before Christmas at the time, I mentioned that I planned to have a little fun by looking up all my family and friends at upcoming holiday parties and blowing their minds with the power of the iPhone.

Well, as it turns out, my family and friends are REALLY boring. Guess what I found when I looked them up? Their addresses, ages, and relatives, all of which I already knew. While I could see the benefit of an employer looking up a prospective employee, or a parent running a quick check on a new babysitter, I soon realized that the app would probably soon end up getting pushed to the last page of apps on my iPhone, and then ultimately end up deleted. However, that all changed yesterday when I was listening to the Howard Stern Show.

Howard mentioned that one of his lower paid employees lived in a pretty scary neighborhood, and his 2 AM commutes through said neighborhood were freaking the guy out. So, on a lark I looked him up. As an avid listener, I knew his full name, I knew he lived in New York, and I knew his dad’s name. Sure enough, up he pops, age 30 (Stern had mentioned that day that the guy had just turned 30 over the holidays). So I now had his address, plus his previous Florida address and relative’s names, which helped me verify it was indeed him.

Cool, I thought. I had no idea what I would do with the info – I’m not familiar enough with New York City to know a good neighborhood from a bad one, but my success at looking up this man had me itching to see who else I could find. Sure enough, I pretty much found everyone on the show, from the show’s writers to Stern’s producer, which shocked me slightly. It made sense that I could find the lowly worker, as odds are he’s just an average guy, making slightly above minimum wage. He has no agents and such to hide behind. He’s famous without being rich, a depressing combo (but likely better than being UNfamous and without being rich). But given his popularity, wealth, and how crazy some Stern fans are, I thought the producer should have been a little harder to find. (Of course, I had no way of knowing if I actually HAD found him – odds the addresses listed could be those of a mail service or an older address, but I had at least found his entry).

OK, so sure, most of these addresses might just be mail services and fronts, but it’s still fun to see what comes up.

So finally I tried the big man himself. I thought for sure I wouldn’t be able to find Howard, but yes, he comes up as well. I had no idea how current/accurate any of this information was, but I was having fun.

Having had success with Howard, a $500 million A-list celebrity, I got a bit bolder, and began looking to see who else I could find. I decided to start a little low on the fame totem pole, with one of my personal heroes, Bruce Campbell from the Evil Dead movies, as well as the Xena, Warrior Princess TV series. Thanks to a quick search of Bruce’s Wikipedia entry, I had his address in about 2 minutes. Same with Hudson Leick, who played the amazingly hot Calisto in the Xena series, and who I had thought of many a lonely night. “Uh Oh”, I thought. “Now I really AM thinking like a stalker”.

To clear my mind of any impure thoughts, I naturally decided to think about baseball. I actually have zero interest in baseball, but I WAS interested in seeing if someone as rich as Derek Jeter had any way to defeat the Background Check App. Here too I simply had to consult wikipedia for his age and parents’ name, which were readily available, and BAM. Up comes Jeter’s entry.

I won’t bore you without he rest of what I found, but a quick run down of the type of celebrities you can likely find a result for would include the likes of Kim Kardashian (and sisters), Bernie Madoff, Ashley Dupre (Eliiot Spitzer’s prostitute), Bruce Springsteen, Jenna Jameson, Joey Lawrence, and Melissa Joan Hart. (My wife happened to be watching a Joey Lawrence/Melissa Joan Hart made for TV movie at the time). I couldn’t find Lindsay Lohan, but I could find her dad, Michael.

I will say the most potentially shocking result I found was for a listing for Tom Cruise (who, again, thanks to Wikipedia which lists his real name, age, and those of his parents) came up with a result which could be his Kentucky residence. (Or just a poor guy in Kentucky with the misfortune of having the same name).

Beware

I realize to some this might seem dangerously close to a “How-To” on how to stalk your favorite celebrity, and I certainly do not mean for it to come across that way. I would recommend strongly against attempting to actually track down any celebrities using this information, not simply because you run the risk of getting in trouble and bothering these celebrities, but also because you may end up harassing random private citizens as there is no guarantee that the celebrity actually lives at the listed address. As you may remember in my initial review of the Background Checker App, there are often inconsistencies in results, even for those of us who are NOT trying to hide from our fans. For instance, MY record was entangled with another man’s who had the same name as me, and my older brother was listed as living at my parent’s house, despite his not having lived there in 12 years, and their having sold the home 3 years ago. So anyone showing up there looking for him likely will be disappointed. I would wager many of the addresses you pull up, depending on the level of celebrity, are either old, fake, or the address of some assistant they used to avoid people like yourself from showing up unannounced. Any use other than recreational is asking for trouble.

Still the added “thrill” of looking up celebrities has certainly reinvigorated my interest in the Background Check App. Just as with my first search of the Stern Show employee, I have no idea WHY I care where any of these celebrities live, it’s just fun to see if you can pull up a result. I suppose it’s the thrill of playing detective, without any of the leg work, training, brains, and bravery that usually goes along with it.

Privacy advocates take notice

Now, before any celebs freak out too much, it’s important to remember that BAC doesn’t show you any information that is not already readily available on the web (from BeenVerified.com, to be specific) – it simply puts it in your hand and wraps it up in a nice interface. In fact for the most part, celebrities’ Wikipedia entries seem to provide the most shocking amounts of information. So while I can imagine it certainly is a scary prospect for any celebrity to know that this information is out there, it’s out there for ALL of us. Odds are anyone who would seek to do anything nefarious with that information likely already has it, or has access to it, and HAS had access to it for years. Lord knows the Paparazzi knows where they live. Right or wrong, the information is out there, and not limited to the iPhone.

In fact, I’m pretty sure celebrities needn’t worry about iPhone users stalking them. We’re all perfectly sane. It’s the Blackberry users you really need to look out for.