On Wednesday, Jul 9, 2003, at 23:19 US/Eastern, palmhaven wrote:
If you want to BLOCK Google from divulging your private information, simply
click on the telephone icon next to your phone number. I removed my name,
but it takes 48-hours.
a) Google is *not*, by a long shot, the only place which connects the phone # to name, to a street address -- there are many other sites/search engines which do the same thing
b) removing yourself doesn't take 48 hrs; it just *doesn't happen*. All that happens is that your spam volume gets doubled or tripled -- now they've *really* "got your number" :) I've -- once -- acted on such a warning from a friend before I really thought it through, so I know.
*Any* personal info that's available, in any form, to the public (via the phone books and "reverse" phone books, the voting registers, the courthouse records on vital statistics, etc, etc) is going to be available to *everyone*, at a stroke of a key. To *anyone* with 'puter access and a bit of persistence. Search engines just make it *easier* to access it all; they don't make it *possible*... Nor are they going to stop providing the info because you'd rather they didn't; info dissemination is what they're about...
I grew up in a world where the language itself didn't even have the term "privacy"... with the idea that "Big Brother is watching you" at all times... So it doesn't bother me anymore; I look to the *positive* aspects of the whole thing -- without 'puter transmissions of info flowing back and forth across the world, USSR might have never foundered, because it depended on secrecy and lack of communication...
But Americans seem to be fondly attached to the idea that they can preserve their privacy... They/y'all never *had* any privacy (just look at the past laws, and what one could get "nailed" for); what it was was an *illusion*, and now it's gone. Just as well, IMO
----- Tamara P Duvall mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED]
