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Spy is such a harsh word. I'd say research instead, or perhaps investigate.
If you are still relying on Google to snoop on your friends, you are behind the curve.
Armed with new and established Web sites, people are uncovering surprising details about colleagues, lovers and strangers that often don't turn up in a simple Internet search. Though none of these sites can reveal anything that isn't already available publicly, they can make it much easier to find. And most of them are free.
Zaba Inc.'s ZabaSearch.com turns up public records such as criminal history and birthdates. Spock Networks Inc.'s Spock.com and Wink Technologies Inc.'s Wink.com are "people-search engines" that specialize in digging up personal pages, such as social-networking profiles, buried deep in the Web. Spokeo.com is a search site operated by Spokeo Inc., a startup that lets users see what their friends are doing on other Web sites. Zillow Inc.'s Zillow.com estimates the value of people's homes, while the Huffington Post's Fundrace feature tracks their campaign donations. Jigsaw Data Corp.'s Jigsaw.com, meanwhile, lets people share details with each other from business cards they've collected -- a sort of gray market for Rolodex data.
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The bad news, for those who find themselves targeted by snoops: There is no foolproof way to protect yourself from embarrassing personal-data leaks. But you can avoid many mishaps by going to the root of the leak -- that is, by keeping individual pieces of personal data from being made public in the first place. If you don't want people to find your address online, for example, don't list it in local phone books, which often provide data to online address-search services. If you don't want others to see your Amazon wish list or the photos you've stored on Flickr, visit those sites' privacy pages and adjust your settings accordingly.
Some sites use the ability to snoop as a selling point. The Huffington Post's Fundrace feature, which allows users to enter their addresses and see a map showing their neighbors' political donations, uses this come-on: "Want to know ... whether that new guy you're seeing is actually a Republican or just dresses like one?"
[From New Sites Make It Easier to Spy on Friends]
The problem with these, and related searches, is that if the subject is someone like me who has intentionally fed misinformation to various requesters for years, then all results are somewhat questionable. When some website or vendor asks for personal information, I always make some up: why should my information be used as a commodity for businesses?
