APG-L Archives

Archiver > APG > 2008-02 > 1203817286


From: Katherine Flynn <>
Subject: Re: [APG] [Fwd: nationwide reverse telephone book]
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:41:26 -0800 (PST)
In-Reply-To: <20080223232240.A12337F514@dm.deskmedia.com>


Dear All,

This is not at all news.

This feature has been on-line for years now (note the first entry in Snopes is 2002!). I don't believe any children have been harmed because of it. Moreover, there was a for-purchase database (Phone Disc) that many, many companies had that did the same thing for well over 10 years before that. With that older database I could easily tell you everyone who lived 10 houses on either side of you and their phone numbers!

Please read the full entry at Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/google.asp

You will see they are not very upset by this.

I do not know why the original messager (not an APG member) was so upset that they might have a picture of her house. Where does she think Google got it? From public sources.

If you do not want to have this work for your phone number in Google then follow the directions to be pulled. If you want to be out of all databases (and there are many, many of them - Google is not the only one) then get an unlisted phone number.

Once data is in a database it can be queried any which way to Sunday. Just like genealogical data! :)

However, may I request forbearance when forwarding to a open mailing list like ours a message with a whole list of e-mail addresses. I don' t think those poor recepients of Millie's well-intentioned alarm have consented that their e-mail addresses be posted on a open site that will now be easily harvested by webcrawlers. That is how SPAM gets to us all.

Maybe the administrator of this list can edit the first posting quickly to protect privacy of those unsuspecting people.

Sincerely,
Kathy Flynn


This thread: