Re: Project 'Gaydar': At MIT, an experiment identifies which stude... [Telecom]

4) Births, deaths, weddings: Often publicized in local newspapers,

> church newsletters, college alumni news notes. If you are a > relative of the person (eg a niece of the decedant or a bridesmaid > in the wedding) your name will appear, too. Same impact as above. > If you die there are special websites that record that. Dead people > do not have privacy rights. However, the living relatives of the > decedant may also be listed and they may not want that.

There are websites maintained by the funeral homes as well as the newspapers that generally show exactly what information appeared in the public newspaper, and was provided by the releatives of the deceased who placed the obituary in the paper. These provide the information that the relatives provided. If you don't want such information out there, don't have an obituary published in the newspaper.

5) Real estate sales: Buying or selling property gets your name in > the paper and thus on the web. In addition, real estate web pages > track that information too.

These are by law public records.

7) Court, govt administrative activity: any civil or criminal court > activity, even minor stuff, gets you out there. If you file an > administrative action such as a proeprty tax appeal, it gets out > there.

These, too, are by law public records. Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Reply to
Wesrock
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I respectfully disagree. This is not a reasonable thing to expect to do for several reasons.

Web distribution is not something people think about when putting together an obituary. More importantly, people who might be aware that an obituary will show up on websites do not realize they get a life of their own and _stay_ out there.

Also, the immediate family of the deceased (or marriage) prepares the obituary (or wedding notice). Cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. listed are not consulted in the preparation. It's not something people think about.

Society has to come to terms with privacy issues the Internet has brought to public records. There are two radically different changes than the past and the changes must be considered:

1) Easy searching: Before computers, public records were difficult to search. Deeds, for example, were stored sequentially on microfilm or in books and the date of sale had to be known. Typically there were not indexes to search by address or name. But today computers make it possible to search for records by a variety of criteria. 2) Remote accessibility: Before computers, public records were typically stored in only one physical location, and one had to go there, during office hours, to access the records. With computers and the Internet, the records may be accessed remotely from anywhere around the world.

These two factors combined may the privacy issue very different from the past. In the past only the most determined person would bother to visit the courthouse and search through records. Today anyone can do so easily.

Reply to
hancock4

In the past, plenty of marketers paid minimum-wage clerical staff to do nothing but sit around at the registry of deeds and take note of every property sale (including buyer, seller, and price) to target their p-spam.

-GAWollman

Reply to
Garrett Wollman

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